


Megalomania

by SecondStarOnTheLeft



Series: Manias [1]
Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-15
Updated: 2015-11-15
Packaged: 2018-04-30 08:24:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 22,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5156888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gotham, after the Joker, is broken. </p>
<p>But then, Gotham has always been broken. It's just more visible now.</p>
<p>Ophelia Monroe, home from London with her son against all advice, wants to see the city repaired, but there is a long path ahead of her, one strewn all over with obstacles.</p>
<p>Bruce Wayne just wishes she'd slow down a little - they have a son to worry about, after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ferrouswheel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferrouswheel/gifts), [Morning_Glory](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morning_Glory/gifts).



_**25th of April 1991** _

Ophelia woke up with a thumping headache and not much else.

“Jeez,” she groaned, squinting against the pain to try and figure out where she was. “Is this a hospital? Mom and Dad are going to have my ass on a platter for this.”

She assumed Evan was sitting by her bed, because he always was, but he didn’t answer back. Evan _always_ answered back, usually with something snarky and a little mean, and Silver was always there to tell him to play nice.

But Evan didn’t answer back.

Phee forced her eyes a little further open, looking to the left, to where an IV stand was set up - she was expecting saline, if anything, but there was a blood bag, and two glass bottles with some kind of label on them. The blood bag was nearly empty, the line tucked into her elbow, and the bottles were linked to her hand, with a little pink tap on the cannula.

And she was wearing a gown? Phee had done three stints in hospital over the years, and Mom always made sure she had pyjamas - even last time, when she’d been knocked out by an Alberto Special in the Chem lab at school, she’d woken up in her favourite PJs with Evan and Silver to keep her company.

She looked to her right, just in case Silver had fallen asleep there, and nearly jumped out of her skin when she caught sight of her arm.

“What the _hell!”_ she shouted, starting to get a _little_ worried, since her whole _fucking_ arm was trapped inside a big metal cage, with a whole bunch of long steel pins sticking into it. She couldn’t see where they went into her arm, and she sure as hell couldn’t _feel_ them, but she knew they were screwed right into the bone. “Hey, hey, nurse? Doctor? _Evan?!”_

There should’ve been a call button somewhere near her hand, but there wasn’t - there was nothing at all, just big white roof tiles and white walls and white window blinds and white goddamn everything, except for that blood bag and the tap on her cannula.

“Evan?” she tried again, starting to get really scared. “Mikey? _Mom?”_

If even _Mom_ wasn’t answering her - and Phee knew that Mom would be here, if whatever had gone down was a big enough deal for her to have ended up with her arm in a _cage_ \- then thing had to be worse than they’d ever been, even after the first time the Roman tried to take Mom out.

“Dad?” she tried, because if things were that bad, Dad would probably be sober, and that meant he’d be standing outside her door, daring the whole world to try and get at his little lady. Dad was great, when he was sober. “Daddy, are you out there?”

The door swung open, and Phee was just about to say _hi_ to Evan when she realised that it was a nurse. Not Evan, or Silver, or Mikey or Mom or Dad, just a nurse.

“I want to speak to my brother,” Phee managed. “Where’s my brother, Evan? Or- are my family in protective custody? Is that what this is? If it is, I want to see my uncle, Doctor Tom Elliot-”

“Do you remember anything of the last four days, Miss Monroe?” the nurse asked, switching out the now-empty blood bag for a full one. “Any of it?”

“Why? What’s going on? What’s wrong with my family?”

“What’s the last thing you remember, Miss Monroe?” the nurse asked, looking concerned now. “Do you remember arriving at the hospital?”

“No,” Phee insisted. “Please, where’s my mom? Please-”

The door swung open again, and Phee nearly started crying from the sheer relief of seeing a familiar face when Emerson stepped through. She knew his face better than she did Dad’s, because he’d been more of a constant in her life so far than either of her parents.

“Emerson, she won’t tell me what’s happening,” Phee said. “Emerson, please, why am I in hospital? Where are Evan and Silver? Where’s _Mom?”_

Emerson nudged around the nurse in that particular butlery way he had, and took Phee’s uncaged hand.

“Do you remember the attack, Miss Ophelia?” he asked gently, settling into a chair she hadn’t noticed before. “After Captain Kane’s party?”

The Captain had thrown a party, she remembered it now, she’d been there with Mom and Dad, and they’d met Evan and Mikey and Silver there, and Bruce and Tommy and Kate had all been there too. Yes. She remembered the party. Her dress had been pale green satin, and she’d worn her hair up even though Mom thought that made her look too old.

She’d left with Mom and Dad, too, and Evan and Mikey had come with them because Dad was being difficult and Mom had a broken wrist from some perp who’d gotten fresh with her in court so she couldn’t handle him with just the little lady to help.

And they’d been waiting. Down in the dark of the parking garage. Mom’s dress had been white, until it was red.

“Where’s my mom?” Phee said, “Emerson, where’s _Mom?!”_

 

_**24th of April, 1994** _

 

“Phee,” Evan said, all relief and worry, and Phee just about managed to lift her head.

“I got sick,” she told him, rubbing her eyes. “All over Dad’s name, Evan, I didn’t mean it.”

Evan reached down out of his wheelchair and gathered her up, tugging her to unsteady feet and pulling her down into his lap. A blanket came from somewhere - Silver, Phee could smell her perfume - and Evan just hugged her tight, his arms strong like Mom’s used to be. She wondered if the guy who’d stabbed Mom to death had scars from where she’d clawed at his face, and hoped he did - it’d make him easier to identify, when she finally had him killed. She wanted to have them all killed, from Alberto through Sofia right up to the Roman, but the Falcones were too well protected just yet.

Someday, for what they’d done, she'd see them suffer. But not yet. She couldn’t get at them _yet._

“I didn’t want them to _die,_ ” she said, starting to cry again. If she’d died and Dad or Mikey had lived, everyone who’d helped kill her would be dead by now. If Dad had outlived Mom, he would have hunted down all the Falcones, and he would have murdered the Roman with his bare hands. Phee could hardly hold a pen with her right hand nowadays, and that just highlighted how unfair everything was. “Why did they _die,_ Evan?”

“Because there are more bad people than good in this city, Phee,” Evan sighed. Evan understood, Evan who’d played football and baseball and polo for fun, before the Falcones came for them, and who couldn’t move without pain now. Who couldn’t even sleep with his wife, because something in his spine had snapped and they couldn’t fix it. “Do me a favour and never run away like this again, okay? I thought _you_ were dead, kiddo.”

She’d always hated Evan calling her _kiddo_ , even though she knew that with a sixteen-year-gap between them, it was justified, but she didn’t fight him on it now. She knew she’d scared him. She’d scared herself, too.

“Why the scotch, Phee?” he asked, and she didn’t have an answer. It had always helped Dad, and Mikey, and she just wanted the hurt to _go away_. Dad had told her that it did that, one time when he’d been so drunk he’d gone from angry to sad. That hadn’t happened too often - he usually got stuck on angry, and branched into violent before he did sad - but when it did, he liked to sit out on the roof, just like Phee did when _she_ got sad, so she’d gotten to know him best then, when he was shitfaced.

“I’m so tired, Evan,” she sighed, curling closer to her brother. He was warm, and safe, and he and Silver were all she had left, really. “I’m just so tired.”

Three years, and three anniversaries, and three times Evan had found Ophelia sprawled drunk on Mom and Dad and Mikey’s grave. She didn’t want to do it, but she found herself here every year, no matter what anyone did or said or tried.

“I don’t want to end up like Mikey, Evan,” she said as Emerson helped her into the back of the car. “Don’t let me end up like Mikey, please?”

“I won’t, Phee,” Evan promised. “I’ll never let that happen, I promise.”

 

_**25th of September, 1996.** _

 

“Not that it’s _any_ of your business, Bruce,” Ophelia said, heaving her suitcase into the trunk without looking at him, “but I’m moving to London, where I’m going to get an MBA and take over the European operations of the company. If you’d taken your head out of your _ass_ the last six months, you’d know that, but hey, that’s not my fault.”

Bruce had filled out since last she’d seen him, during Spring Break - he’d put on muscle, she thought, looking at him in that tight t-shirt, and if she hadn’t been so goddamn _angry_ with him, she would have teased him about it after they had sex.

Because they always had sex. It was just… How they worked.

Right now, though, Bruce was trying to stop her leaving Gotham. He kept saying she _belonged_ in Gotham, but he just-

He’d gotten out as soon as he could! He’d done his undergrad at Princeton, and was staying on to get his MBA! _She’d_ at least done her undergrad at GCU with that _insufferable_ bitch Bruce was always mooning after in half her classes, because pre-law seemed to have to take every goddamn corporate law class the university offered.

It wasn’t as if she didn’t have a perfectly good reason to want out! She’d watched Mom and Dad and Mikey _die_ , and Evan get beaten up so bad that he couldn’t walk, and then Uncle Tom had been run off the Bay Road, and she’d had to do three separate terms in rehab, and she’d had _enough._ Evan had given her his blessing, and Silver had helped her pick out an apartment nearby her new school, and Emerson had come with her last month to help her set up.

Bruce had come up from Princeton to try and talk her out of it, but he’d only come _today._ It didn’t count now, even if all she’d wanted for the last six damn months was for him to do just this.

“I’m going, Bruce,” she said, mortified when she couldn’t manage to pull down the lid of the trunk with her bad hand, the hand that had never come right since the night of the attack, and she smacked Bruce away with her good left hand when he tried to help. “Oh my _God_ , Wayne, stop! I don’t want your help! I don’t want your _anything_ right now!”

“Ophelia, this is madness,” he said, angrier than she could ever remember seeing him. “Your home is here - all your family, all your friends-”

“All the people who want to see me dead because of my last name,” she spat, “all the people who think they can just use me for sex and pretend to care about me because the girl they _really_ want is completely _uninterested!”_

Bruce stepped back, furious with her - as if he had any right! As if _he_ was allowed to be angry! His parents had died in an accident - everyone knew that it had been a mugging gone bad, not like _her_ family.

“I have never used you,” he hissed. “You know how I feel about you, Phee, how I’ve always felt about you-”

She slapped him, as hard as she could with her good, weak left hand, and pushed her glasses back up her nose while they stared at one another.

“You lying _bastard_ ,” she said angrily. “You absolute- you think I don’t know why you gave me that _damned_ ring? You think I don’t _know_ that Alfred made you, because he was _ashamed_ of how you were treating me?”

“You turned me down, Phee,” he snapped. “I asked you to marry me because I thought that was what _you_ wanted, I thought it was the right thing to do-”

“ _Alfred_ thought it was the right thing to do,” she said. “I turned you down because we were nineteen, and we would have made each other miserable, because I wouldn’t have let you wallow. That’s all you do, Bruce, you wallow and you feel sorry for yourself, and I can’t _handle_ it anymore!”

 

_**25th of June, 2002** _

 

Evan had a car waiting when Ophelia led Scout out of the airport, sunglasses in place against the usual barrage of camera flashes. Scout took it all in stride - he’d come to expect it, every time they arrived in Gotham - and swung his hand in hers, his usual expression of polite contentment firmly in place.

The car was sleek, and black, and very modern. It would blend in with the army of towncars that flooded the streets of the city around close-of-business every day, and was therefore a much better option for a quick escape than any of the cars that lived in the huge subterranean garage up at the House. Evan loved those cars like babies, and loved to drive them, but he knew better than to send one of the Phantoms. People _noticed_ a powder blue 1936 Rolls Royce Phantom, but they ignored a black towncar with tinted windows and shiny alloys. Everyone had a towncar these days, but not too many people drove a car like the one Ophelia’s family had been murdered on top of.

Scout clambered into the back seat, tugging his adorable cabin bag in after him, and Ophelia took the time to slide in a little more elegantly - Scout got away with inelegance, because he was a kid, and because he was male, but Ophelia’s reputation was unsteady enough that she knew better than to tempt fate. She’d worn a skirt today, after all, and if she climbed in the way Scout had, the whole of Gotham would see her La Perlas splashed all over the morning edition of the Gazette.

 

* * *

 

 

Gotham never changed much - even catastrophe couldn’t shift whatever it was that made Gotham _Gotham_. Same criss-cross of streets, same gleaming pillars of industry shining over the grubbier homes of the worker bees, same air of stale despair and always-fresh hope.

Ophelia took a deep breath. Nowhere else on earth smelled quite like Gotham. Nowhere at all felt like it, either, and she was glad of that. No one but a Gothamite could handle Gotham, that was for sure. She wouldn’t wish the city on anyone else.

The car ferried them to the Monroe Building, in the heart of the business district, without incident. It was a straight run, more or less, from the airport, and Scout napped for most of it - he’d been so hyped up on the plane that he’d chatted at her for seven of the nine hours they’d spent in the air, and between that and the inevitable jet lag, she was bound to have one sleepy, cranky little asshole on her hands for the next week or so.

She curled her good arm around him and stroked his hair as he slept, hating that he was getting to an age where he might start thinking that napping with his head in his mom’s lap wasn’t cool anymore. She couldn’t bear the idea of him not wanting to be close to her, even though she knew that he had to grow up someday.

Still, he was only seven. He had heaps of time to grow up in the future. Just, not quite yet. She wanted to keep him all to herself for a while longer.

 

* * *

 

 

He clung to her hand, rubbing the heel of his hand into his eyes as he tottered after her into the lobby and then into the private elevator that led to Evan’s office, all the way up on the top floor. From there, you could see right across the city, the view interrupted only by the Wayne Building on the other side of the Million Mile - not a mile long, but named back in the day, when the city was new and people had more poetry in their souls, and before the people who owned Gotham were billionaires, rather than just millionaires.

“C’mon, kiddo,” she murmured, nudging Scout fully awake. “We’re home, honey - don’t you want to see the city?”

Evan, of course, was hunched over some contract or other when they arrived. Ophelia had made him promise to be ready for them, but he never was - he always had to finish up _just one last thing_ when they walked through the door, and it never stopped pissing her the hell off on Scout’s behalf.

Scout barely noticed, of course. He made a beeline for the huge windows, plastering his hands and face to the glass, smushing his nose against the pane in delight. He loved looking down at the city from here, because from this height, the grid of the streets was obvious, and he loved that grid like it was his favourite stuffed animal.

“Hey, big brother,” Ophelia said, hitching herself up onto Evan’s desk and leaning back on her good hand, the better to wait for him to finish up. “I see you’re still living an exciting life.”

“Don’t tease, Phee,” he chided, but he was smiling, so she didn’t mind. “We can’t _all_ be international socialites, after all.”

Ophelia let that one slide - Evan took care of the company at home, and while she did have an uncanny tendency to pop up in the society pages no matter what city she was in, Evan knew as well as she did herself that the London office had been in safe hands for the past six years, since she and Scout had moved across the pond.

“So you’re finally coming home,” Evan said, still not looking up from his contract. “Any particular reason?”

She knew what he meant. Of _course_ she knew what he meant. Evan had always disapproved of her longest-running romantic relationship, mostly because he worried that Bruce had always wielded more influence over her than was healthy - in hindsight, not an unfounded concern - but also because he just plain didn’t like Bruce. He never had, especially not after Bruce’s parents were killed and he’d turned into a moody piece of shit.

It was an understandable change, Ophelia knew that better than most, but that didn’t mean that Bruce hadn’t been a fucking nightmare for a good two years after Thomas and Martha were shot.

That she’d gone and had a kid with Bruce had been the final straw, as far as Evan was concerned, but he’d been of the opinion that at least Bruce had had the good sense to run away so she could raise Scout in peace. And now Bruce was back in Gotham, back in Wayne Manor, and Evan was assuming that Ophelia had come back to rekindle their grand romance.

No way. She’d done her time, pining after Bruce when he’d been oblivious, and convincing herself that her feelings were mutual while he’d deigned to sleep with her, but she knew better now.

Hindsight might be a bitch, but at least she had 20/20 vision.

“I didn’t come back for Bruce,” she said firmly. “I came back because I can tell from what you’ve been leaving out of our conversations that you need help, and because the reports from the Foundation are appalling, and I want to get a bit more hands-on. And I want Scout to go to school here. And Harvey is sick, and I want to be closer to him to help out, if he’ll let me.”

All true, of course - Evan’s health had been incredibly delicate ever since the attack that robbed them of their parents and his twin, and since he refused to admit it and worked ridiculous hours, it fell to Ophelia and what family and friends they had to try and bully him into looking after himself.

The Monroe Foundation, the charitable arm of the family empire, had taken a genuinely frightening nose-dive in the past three years, and while Ophelia had done everything she could from London, it was hard to run a charity from thousands of miles away, if only because you couldn’t tell where the _damn_ money was most needed.

It felt like the whole of Gotham needed it, sometimes, and she had a nasty feeling she’d be crying herself to sleep in the near future because of how little all those millions of dollars seemed to help.

As for Scout going to school here - well, every Monroe in Gotham had attended Saint Francis Xavier’s Catholic School since it’s founding, two years after the city itself was founded, and Ophelia saw no reason to break that chain. Sure, Scout hadn’t had his name down for Francis Xavier since conception, which was more or less the norm nowadays, given how tight admissions were, but he was a Monroe. He’d get in.

And then there was Harvey.

Ophelia’s godfather had smoked forty a day since he was fifteen, and at sixty-eight had finally succumbed to lung cancer. Harvey Bullock was the most stubborn asshole she’d ever known, so she didn’t doubt that he’d beat the bug, but she still wanted to be nearby, just in case.

She didn’t, and never would, admit to being a little _curious_ about Bruce’s return, if nothing else. He’d disappeared without a trace after Joe Chill was released, and no matter how much money she and Alfred and Tommy had sunk into hunting for him, there’d been no sign of him anywhere on the planet. They’d checked every square inch, or as near as they could, so he must’ve gone way underground.

Bruce had been her best friend for as long as she could remember, and she’d been closer to him than to anyone else, truth be told, because it sometimes felt like he was the only one who understood why she sometimes hated being a Monroe. Being a Wayne was kind of the same thing, after all.

But she hadn’t come back to Gotham for Bruce. She meant that - she’d been worried about Evan since she and Scout had visited for Christmas, and had kept in touch with anyone who saw him regularly, trying to figure out if he really was as sick as he’d seemed when she and Scout had walked through Arrivals to find him waiting for them. He’d looked so delicate that it had scared the shit out of her, and she’d worked her ass off in London for the past six months so she could come home and take some of Evan’s weight.

After losing Mom and Dad and Mikey, well, Phee was going to protect all the family she had left with everything in her.


	2. Chapter 2

“It never changes much, does it?”

Ophelia didn’t look away from the city below them, shining so brightly against the night that you could almost forget just how dirty it really was. It was something you learned from Gotham, to hide the truth behind a bleach-bright smile and an updo, and Ophelia had been a straight-A student all her life.

“I don’t know,” she said, stirring her drink with her little finger, lifting her hand back up to watch the fine amber liquid slide over the gold of her signet ring. “I can see some new scars since last I lived here.”

The Joker had left plenty of scars for everyone to see, even people who never saw the city spread out like a jigsaw from this high up, and the gaping, gulping maw that was all that remained of Arkham’s east wing still stood testament to the Scarecrow’s adventures - a more concrete reminder for City Hall than the dozens of people who crammed into soup kitchens and homeless shelters across the city, apparently, since they were talking about funding the rebuilding of Arkham but hadn’t done shit for the Narrows.

Bruce slid into place beside her as though there were no scars between them, casting her hands into shadow and dipping his head down to her level. Even after all this time, he was still beautiful, and Ophelia felt achingly wistful for what might have been, once upon a time.

“You didn’t come and see me when you were home at Easter,” he said quietly, nudging his shoulder against hers gently. This close, he had creases around his eyes, and his lips seemed less soft than she remembered. “Or Christmas, or-”

“Of course I never came to see you since you came home,” she said calmly. “I was mad at you. I’m not mad anymore.”

She watched him over the rim of her glass as she sipped her drink, glad she’d chosen to wear contacts tonight, and smiled when he pursed his mouth to keep from doing the same.

“Two years is a long time to be mad,” he pointed out, tapping one patent-shoed toe on the floor behind them.

“Seven years is a long time to be dead,” she countered, tapping one creamy-painted nail against her glass. “You look good for a corpse, Bruce.”

His own glass only had ginger ale and ice, which surprised her - just because she’d been away, and keeping away, didn’t mean she hadn’t kept up to date on all his tabloid spills and thrills. Vicki Vale’s column, before she’d graduated to actual journalism, had spent months documenting Bruce’s tumbles from grace, and Ophelia had kept up her digital subscription to the Gazette just for that. Maybe he was being a good boy tonight specifically to talk to her - who knew?

“So you’re back for good?” he asked, turning to lean his back against the railing, folding his arms and watching her sidelong. “Scout mentioned something about Saint Xavier’s.”

Scout mentioned all kinds of things when he was with Bruce, Ophelia reckoned - he adored his dad, and she couldn’t blame him, not when Bruce was so attentive - and rolled her eyes. She’d been hoping to keep their return to the city quiet, until they got settled in, but Scout had probably been telling everyone who’d listen that he was _finally_ getting to go to the school that his parents and uncle and all the other adults in his life told such great stories about.

Or maybe he was just excited to be close to Bruce and Evan for more than two weeks at a time. It was a long flight to London, and work and school meant that Ophelia and Scout didn’t get to visit Gotham as often as either of them would like - and she knew damn well that the six weeks between Halloween and Christmas felt a lot longer to a nine year old than they did to her.

“Yeah,” she said, draining her glass and setting it on the flat top of the chrome railing. “Yeah, I think we are.”

 

* * *

 

Gotham _had_ changed, so much that Bruce had hardly recognised it when he returned two, almost three years ago. It had changed even more in just that time, but certain things had never shifted an inch.

This was one of them.

Ophelia’s mouth still tasted of good scotch, and she still kissed like she expected him to let her win. She still clawed at his back with her left hand, even through his suit, and let her right hand hang lazily around his neck. Her ass was still just more than two handfuls, and she still wrapped her legs around his hips straight away when he lifted her off the floor, kicking off her high, high shoes before linking her ankles at the small of his back.

“I’d forgotten how good you are at this,” she said, voice low and breathless, and then she smiled and kissed him even harder. “Did you miss me, all the time you were away?”

Honestly, he hadn’t thought of her, or of anyone in Gotham, really, as much as he should have done. He’d been training too hard, learning everything he could to try and save the city that had made him, and he regretted it now.

If he’d thought about Ophelia some while he was away, he might have looked up her at some point, and he might not have been as surprised by Scout’s existence when he finally came home.

Now wasn’t the time to think about Scout, though. Now was the time to think about how good it felt when Phee dragged her teeth the length of his neck, from under his ear to the edge of his collar, and to think about getting her naked as fast as possible.

“Easy, tiger,” she cooed, pushing herself out of his arms to tumble splayed out onto his bed. She was beautiful there, the rich red and green of her hair and dress bright against the pale dove grey of his sheets, and he realised just how much he’d missed her, more the two years since he’d come home than the seven years he’d been away. “I need to take out my contacts, Bruce, or else I’ll be blind come morning. Give me a second?”

He took that second to tug off his tie and step out of his shoes, watching the way she moved. By the time she was done, he was stripped down to his shirt and boxers, and her dress was slipping up her legs.

“Now is the time to go fast,” she told him, and he laughed and joined her on the bed. Her dress was a side zip, because she found them easier to close, and her bra and panties were plain beige, functional and practical and the least sexy thing he’d ever seen, so he laughed.

“Sorry,” he murmured against her neck. “I was just expecting something a bit lacier, Phee.”

She huffed, and somehow pushed him onto his back, and when she reached back to unclip her bra, he suddenly found her big, practical panties a lot sexier.

“You men have it so easy,” she said, shaking her head and pressing down hard against his erection. “Any underwear will do, won’t it?”

She kissed him again then, twisting her right hand tight into his hair and bracing her left against the headboard, and he took the hint, breaking away to kiss her breasts, which were just as beautiful as he remembered, if a little bigger and much softer.

She moaned something that might have been an order, but he ignored her, because her nipple was hard and tight between his teeth, and it wasn’t enough.

“Move,” he grit out, gently rolling her over and watching her struggle to catch her breath as he pulled off his shirt. “Get naked, Monroe, you’ve got until I count to ten.”

“You’re so _demanding_ -”

“One,” he said, clambering off the bed to shove off his boxers, grinning at the sight of her struggling with her Spanx. “Two.”

“Get over here and help me,” she ordered, and he did, willingly, because he’d always found undressing her unbelievably hot. “And don’t dare keep counting-”

“Three, four, five,” he teased, kissing her as they worked her panties off. “Six, seven,” he added, throwing them aside as she wriggled to her hands and knees and crawled halfway across the bed, her hair tangling over her shoulders and her skin pale and flushed and livid with scars. “Eight, nine, ten,” he finished, catching her around the waist and tugging her back so she was sitting in his lap, her back pressed to his chest.

“You’ve muscled up a lot,” she said, tipping her head back and coaxing him down for a kiss with a brush of her fingertips to his jaw. “I like it. It’s hot.”

“Please tell me you’re on the pill,” he said, shaking his head against the curve of her shoulder and smiling helplessly. “Because I don’t know if I can wait for another count of ten, Phee.”

“Implant,” she promised him, grinding back against him, and he’d never loved her ass more than he did in that moment. “Get to it, Muscles, even _I’m_ getting impatient now.”

“And that’s not like you,” he agreed sarcastically, shifting his hold on her so he could lift her up and let her back down, slowly.

“Fuck,” she choked out. “Oh, _fuck,_ Bruce-”

“Trying,” he managed, rolling his hips up into her, wrapping both arms tighter around her, one around her waist and one over her hip so he could touch her enough to get her off. “God, Phee, _trying-”_

She pitched forward, her left hand braced on the headboard again, and moaned “ _Harder, damn it,”_ and Bruce thought that maybe he’d lose his mind just at how good it felt to be with her at all, much less like this, after so damn long.

And then she shivered, and shook, and went so tight his eyes crossed, and she cried out his name as she came around him, and he shouted hers, and then held out his arm so she could curl against his side once he’d settled against the pillows.

“Want to come to dinner with us on Sunday?” she asked, reaching over him in search of something - probably her purse, because she’d always been partial to a post-orgasm smoke - and smiling, her hair all in her face and her eye make-up smudged all over. “Scout’s been asking if you could forever, and since we’re talking again, I figure, why the hell not?”

“Sure,” he agreed. “For Scout, anything.”

 


	3. Chapter 3

Jay didn’t like the cops.

It wasn’t because they were corrupt - the corrupt ones were more effective than the straight ones, most of the time. Jay knew how to use corruption, and he knew how to use brutality, even if he didn’t necessarily like it.

He didn’t like the cops because they thought they were _superior_.

Jay was a poor black boy who’d grown up in the Narrows, who’d made a name for himself in the boxing ring, who’d gotten rich through racketeering and selling on stolen cars - all with as little violence as possible. He had money, and influence, and a thriving garage that fitted out stolen cars so they looked like new, selling them on for a fortune, and fixed up shitty cars for the locals for shit all money. Jay payed his mechanics from the profits on the refits, which meant he didn’t have to push up the prices on the locals.

The refits also allowed him to run the gym.

The gym - properly Mabel’s, after his ma - kept a lot of local kids off the streets after school. There were boxing and kickboxing classes in the main gym, standard fitness classes in the other downstairs room, with all the machines, dance classes in the basement, and yoga and pilates and martial arts classes in the loft. It was a big old shithole of a building, a repurposed warehouse with insulated walls, good lighting, and a big enough kitchen to feed half the Narrows.

It had done, after the Joker - the bigwigs Downtown and in the Palisades had seemed to burn themselves out after Fear Night, and they’d been so wrapped up in how directly the Joker had threatened them that they’d forgotten to worry about everyone else in the damn city.

But none of that mattered to the cops. All they saw was the poor black boy who’d gotten himself thrown in a holding cell for trying to jack the alloys off of the Waynes’ swanky towncar.

All this made dating his girl really awkward.

“So your old man,” he said, shrugging his jacket higher up his shoulders as Babs wheeled closer. “You sure he’s okay with this?”

Barbara Gordon Junior was hot as hell, all razor-sharp mind and ridiculous glasses, but her old man was _commissioner_ now. She was a cop’s kid, but _damn._

_Damn._

“You know he is,” she told him. “You’re an upstanding member of the community, working with the Wayne and Monroe Foundations to better the lives of everyone in the Narrows.”

Some of Jay’s buddies didn’t like that he was dating Babs - because her dad was a cop, because she was smarter than the rest of the city put together, because she was in a wheelchair or because she was white or on track to becoming a lawyer, he didn’t know, and he didn’t much care. He liked Babs plenty, enjoyed her company and liked how she wasn’t afraid of him.

She’d grown up in the Narrows - even if her old man was well off now, he’d been a dirt-poor beat cop when Babs was a kid - and she knew the score. She _knew_ to be afraid of the man who wore the Hood, but she _wasn’t._

Everyone else was, except for Jay’s buddies - Steph who kept Midtown quiet, the Penguin who worked the Theater District, even that upstart rich gal in Uptown, Kate, who’d stepped in since the Bat had disappeared. There had been more people, before, but they'd disappeared over the past couple of years.

Lots of people had disappeared after the Joker. Some of the bad dudes who’d broken out of Arkham during Fear Night had disappeared off the Waterfront, probably going down with the Joker - one or two of them had been locked back up, Jay had seen the reports in the small print in the Gazette, but there had been a lot of floating bodies in the rivers, and more of them had been identified than the cops knew. 

But the Bat? Jay hadn’t expected him to fade away.  He was still active, probably, given how quiet the Italians had been, but he’d been damn quiet, too, which meant that there were _freaks_ breaking out - the Scarecrow had made a reappearance, and there had been some asshole calling himself  _Firefly_ who had been setting fires all over Midtown. There'd been that creep the  _Ventriloquist_ who'd been stirring up trouble with the Rileys, and crazy old Hugo Strange who'd lost the plot after the city had cleared the money to rebuild Gotham. Jay had been sweeping up the mess since the Bat had slipped into the shadows 

Which had left Jay in the awkward position of having to lie to his girlfriend.

“Jason,” Babs said, and Jay forced down a shiver - Babs was the only one who ever used his proper name, which had made it into a thing. “Hon, let me tell you something - when you’re fighting bad guys in your head, I can see. It’s right there on your face. You do this thing-”

She pulled the most ridiculous face he’d ever seen, and then grinned.

“That’s you,” she told him. “Thinking about crime. Now take me to dinner.”

 

* * *

 

The thing about dating Babs was that she was too smart, and _way_ too good with computers.

“So, I did this thing,” she explained, “and suddenly the GCPD has access to a whole bunch of people’s porn viewing history.”

“I’m sorry, what?” he said, wishing he wasn’t so distracted. She had a way of doing that, of catching him out when he was thinking about something else by saying something completely ridiculous, but which might be true. She was good enough with computers that something like that might be something she could do, which was amazing and kind of terrifying.

Some of the guys were doing patrol without him, though, along Charleston and Fifth, right on the edge of their territory, and he was nervous. They’d gotten some fresh blood recently, and Jay didn’t fully trust them.

“You were a million miles away,” Babs said, smiling a little. “Hon, if you need to be somewhere else tonight, you should have said. We can reschedule, you know that.”

Babs was right, and she was also great whenever Jay had urgent business that disrupted a date - so long as he texted her to let her know an hour or more in advance, Babs was always cool with it. She was used to it by now, and she cancelled nearly as many dates as he did…

Even if she usually cancelled because she had to go to the hospital. Which was a better excuse than “I can’t make dinner tonight because I have to beat an asshole who’s been collecting kids left homeless after the Joker’s rampage, and he’s been selling them to pedophiles all over town. I need his customers’ names so I can kill them, and I need to break his kneecaps to get those names. Sorry, babe.”

Well, maybe not a better excuse, but a more legal one. What with Babs’ dad being who he was, Jay had to be careful what excuses he gave her, in case she let something incriminating slip to the old man.

“Nah, Babs, we’re good,” he promised. “I’m just- busy. We’ve got a tax inspection at the gym next week, and I’m about to get approval for the mortgage to buy the club. Busy, that’s all. I promise.”

Babs just looked at him over her glasses with one eyebrow raised, in that sexy-teacher way of hers that was going to make her terrifying in the courtroom once she got through law school, and then she smiled.

“You’ll tell me eventually,” she said, shrugging. “In the meantime, tell me how the game was yesterday - I still can’t believe I missed their first win all season.”

Only a true child of Gotham could be as devoted a Knights fan as Babs, so Jay gave her as much detail as he could manage.

 

* * *

 

 

 

Cheekbones were more fragile than jawbones, and they broke quicker than just about any other bones in the body, in Jay’s experience.

A good solid punch could crack a cheekbone easy as pie, and there weren’t many kids who’d spent time in the ring who didn’t know what it felt like to have a broken cheekbone or to break one, which was why Jay had no patience for anyone who made a song and dance about it.

“A crybaby, huh?”

Jay straightened up from checking little Tim for a concussion to greet Dr. Thompkins, who was today wearing something absurd in orange. She’d never had any taste in clothes, not since the first time Jay had met her, all those years ago in the orphanage. She’d done a lot of pro bono work around the poorer parts of the city even then, when she’d had a full time job as a paediatric surgeon at the Gotham General. She was one of the best women in the city, including Babs, and Jay loved her like a mother.

She was also a complete hardass, with no patience for whining, so when she crouched down in front of Tim and tipped his head up by the chin, Jay bit his lip to keep from smiling.

“Not even crushed,” she said briskly. “Just a little fracture - you get your hiney over to St. Martha’s and tell them Doc Leslie sent you honey, okay?”

Tim just about got into his sweatpants and hoodie before he ran out the door, which seemed to please the good doctor to all hell.

“What brings you to this fine establishment of mine, Doc?” Jay asked, unwinding the tape from around his wrists and gesturing for her to lead the way. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

“I’m a busy woman, thank you very much,” Doc said, smacking him on the shoulder. “Show some respect, you little punk. I just saved your boy a hospital bill.”

“He can afford it,” Jay said. “He’s a Drake, Leslie, Jack and Jane Drake’s son - he’s one of those rich kids who thinks learning to box down here will make him tougher than learning in one of those fancy clubs Uptown.”

There were more kids like that every day - rich kids of all ages, boys mostly, coming down from Uptown and the Palisades. Jay took them all in, charged anyone with a name he recognised from the society pages or the dedicated organised crime pages in the Gazette five times what he charged the local kids for their lessons, and trained them hard as hell.

The kids from the better parts of town didn’t take the broken cheekbones and split knuckles as well as the local kids, Jay had noticed.

“For real, though,” he said, tossing the used tape in the bin and turning to face the doc. “What’s up that you’re down here?”

“I might have a new student for you,” she said, taking a slim cardboard file from her enormous purse. “He’s a good boy, but shy.”

Jay flipped the file open, and barely glanced before starting to laugh.

“You want to send a kid who’s half Monroe and half Wayne for boxing lessons at a gym that’s fifteen minutes from where both sets of his grandparents were murdered? Are you crazy, Doc?”

“I want to send him for boxing lessons with the best teacher in the city,” the doc said, “who’ll be more understanding of his limitations than any of the asshole rich boys his parents might otherwise send him to, I think.”

Outside of the gym, Doc Thompkins never said a single swear - she said people were too ready to assume she was just an angry old black woman when she cursed up a storm, and too ready to forget that she was the longest-serving and most decorated surgeon in the city. Here, in the gym, with just Jay for company, she cursed better than Jay had at sixteen, when he’d been at his wildest.

“He’s a healthy looking kid,” Jay said of Liam Monroe. “I’ve seen him out and about with his folks, and with the uncle in the wheelchair. What’re these limitations?”

“He’s got Asperger’s,” the doc said, pushing Jay towards his office behind the hanging bags. “And you’re going to handle it sensitively, understand me?”

“What’s your interest in him?”

“His grandparents were my dearest friends before they were shot dead, as it happens,” she said drily, “and I was fond of Grace Monroe, too - Liam, I could take or leave, with or without a drink.”

“And?”

“And he’s probably going to be targeted by every bully under the age of fifteen when he starts school here,” the Doc admitted. “He’s going to need any help he can get - he’s a beautiful soul, Jason, I don’t want him hurt any more than he has to be, given who his parents are.”

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

“Gotham is a city that needs help,” Ophelia said bluntly, “and I plan on giving it some of what it needs.”

She knew it wasn’t technically up to her - she was, in her own right, a multi-millionaire, bordering on a billionaire thanks to the investment portfolio Dad and the twins had built up for her, and her personal property portfolio, but all big expenditures made by the Foundation or the company itself had to be cleared by Evan and the respective boards. Ophelia was chair of the Foundation’s board of directors, and chief of European operations on the company board, but she couldn’t promise money that wasn’t hers.

And the kind of money needed to help Gotham would have to come from the Foundation. She needed to get the Foundation on side, which would be easier if she went public with her plans first.

Hence the interview with Vicki Vale.

“There are community groups within the city - particularly in Midtown and the Narrows, I’ve found,” Ophelia went on, watching Vicki take notes despite the recorder balanced on her crossed knee. “Sports clubs and youth clubs, church groups, soup kitchens, volunteer medical centres - I plan on supporting the worthiest of them. There’s no point in us charging in and giving people what we think they need - I saw that in London, and I’ve seen in here, with projects from the Wayne and Elliot Foundations, and indeed from my own family’s efforts. My father built a community swimming pool in the middle of the Narrows, for kids who can’t swim! Who’ve never seen water other than the damn river!”

“So we can expect a big investment in the Narrows, then?”

“Building works have already begun on apartment blocks to replace those destroyed during Fear Night,” Ophelia said, “which is more than the city has done - or my esteemed friends, as it happens.”

She smiled, aware that Tommy and Bruce and the rest would be furious with her, but it did have to be said. She’d only come back to the city after Fear Night, after the Narrows had been more or less destroyed, and while Bruce had rebuilt the monorail and Tommy had opened a clinic, well, that had been about it.

So she’d nagged Evan until he gave her access to billions of dollars over the past few years, and apartment blocks had sprung up, with low rents and solid walls. They weren’t fancy, and they could have been bigger, maybe, but then there wouldn’t have been as many units, and there wouldn’t have been room for as many families.

Evan still didn’t think it was fully necessary, but Ophelia did. She’d gone into the city after she and Scout came home, and she’d seen. She’d seen the kids who didn’t have any parents, and the parents who did have any kids, and she couldn’t not help them.

Harvey had helped point her in the right direction, had told her who to send people to talk with, what streets to avoid, what city officials to bribe for planning permission, what builders would offer good wages to their workers, who’d hire good Gothamites rather than out-of-towners.

She didn’t say any of that, of course. For one, it would sound incriminating, and would incriminate Harvey by association. For another, it sounded kind of racist, and that wouldn’t be good for the chief of probably the largest charitable organisation in the city.

“Tell me then, Ophelia,” Vicki said, dusting invisible dirt off her perfectly pressed pencil skirt, which was an outrageous shade of red. Annoyingly, it really, really suited her. “Once you have all your great works under way, what do you intend on doing? How will you spend your time and money?”

“On my son, mostly,” Ophelia said. “Scout deserves all the time and effort I can give him.”

“Oh, don’t play coy with me, Phee,” Vicki laughed. “No one missed your sneaky departure with Mr. Wayne at the mayor’s ball last week.”

Ophelia couldn’t help but blush - she and Bruce had always been something of a scandal among their social circle, and Vicki was one of them, even if she’d chosen to betray them all and take up journalism. Of course she’d home in on the fact that Ophelia had left the mayor’s ball with Bruce’s hand on her ass last week.

At least Bruce had waited until they were in the car to get his hand on her ass under her skirt.

“Bruce and I are as we always were,” Ophelia said coolly. “He’s Scout’s dad, besides - don’t look so surprised, Vicki, everyone knew, I just never confirmed.”

And that was true, if nothing else was - she’d always kept Scout’s paternity an open secret, when Bruce was missing-presumed-dead, and she’d worked to bury the proof of it when Bruce had been ruled legally dead. Alfred had helped, had forged a will that named Scout as Bruce’s legal heir, had given her access to Doctor Tom’s contacts - via Doctor Leslie - so she could get Scout in to good doctors.

God, that had been fun. The press fall-out from being seen coming out of the Hanover Clinic had been hell, which was why she’d moved Scout’s care wholesale to London. Less press attention, less stress for the little man. It was hard enough moving in their circles with his little problem without that.

“I suppose we did know,” Vicki said with one of her sleek smiles. “Confirmation is always nice in journalism, Ophelia, you know that.”

“So that’s why you never published my testimony following the attack,” Ophelia said, leaning over to refill Vicki’s glass of sparkling water. Her own had ice cubes made of gin, but Vicki didn’t need to know that. Emerson had all kinds of ingenious tricks, learned over long years of serving as Dad’s personal barman, and Phee was not above making use of them. “And here I thought it was plain old fear of the Falcones.”

“Now, now, Ophelia,” Vicki said. “Alberto Falcone is one of your strongest allies in rebuilding the city - he’s pledged thousands of dollars of his own money-”

“His family’s charitable foundation’s money,” Ophelia corrected her. “I keep a sharp eye on things, Vicki, you’re not going to catch me out on something like that.”

She paused long enough to let Vicki realise that she really wasn’t drunk, and then smiled.

“Besides, Alberto and I are old friends,” she said. “We went to school together, back in the day. Did a lot of fundraising together, before we had access to our trust funds or our foundations.”

That wasn’t entirely a lie - she and Alberto Falcone had raised a lot of money together, while they were at school, but it had mostly been because each of them had wanted to beat the other into the ground, and win the prize for “most money raised” at the end of every fundraising drive. They’d wanted to beat one another at everything, and it had never been the kind of friendly competition that had existed between Tommy and Bruce.

And then, well… Ophelia was still convinced she’d seen the glint of Alberto’s obnoxious lilac glasses in the shadows of the garage before she’d passed out, the night of the attack. Everyone had proven that none of the Falcones had had anything to do with what had happened, but that was a lie.

But that wasn’t what this interview was about. This interview was about shaming all the other idle rich into parting with some of their money to help those less fortunate, and about directing the scandal of confirming Scout’s paternity onto her and Bruce, away from Scout.

Scout and the city. That was what mattered.

 

* * *

 

Lunch with Tommy and Peyton the next day was… Strained.

Vicki had published the interview more or less unedited - she’d taken out most of the cursing, of course, because she was weirdly puritanical about that kind of thing, but she’d left in all of Ophelia’s little digs at her peers.

Thing was, Phee loved Tommy - he’d been the next thing to a brother, after her brothers, because his dad had been Mom’s little brother. Uncle Tom had been more in love with Mom and Dad’s ideal society marriage than with his own wife, and both Tommy and Aunt Dahlia had suffered for it. Phee’s house had always been a refuge for Tommy, growing up, for him and for Bruce both, one from living parents and the other from ghosts.

Tommy was a selfish asshole, though. Sure, he’d set up the Dahlia Elliot Clinic after Fear Night, when Ophelia had still been in London and every asshole with a seven-digit bank balance (or, you know, an eight, nine, or ten digit bank balance) had been throwing money at the holes the Scarecrow had left all over the city. There were all kinds of clinics and half-way houses and shelters and soup kitchens around the city now, but most of them were badly run, poorly funded, and not doing their job.

“You went too far,” Tommy said bluntly, running a hand through his hair - he was the only person she knew, aside from Kate Kane, who had hair redder than hers - and scowling. He’d perfected his scowl on all those poor interns down at Gotham General, but Phee had known him all her life, and it did fuck all to her. “It wasn’t fair to push all of us to be you, Phee - the rest of us have responsibilities outside of charity.”

Ophelia waved a hand with all the airy grace she could muster - not something she had in abundance, being short, fat, and covered in scars, but something she could dig out when she needed to. Mom had had it in spades, being tall and slim, built like Uncle Tom, like Tommy, but Phee was all Monroe, except the hair, and it showed at times like this.

“Look, Tom,” she said, forcing back a smile when Peyton hid a laugh in her wine. “I get it, I do - you’re so busy shouting at all those kids at the hospital that you barely have time for your fiancée, never mind for poor people who rely on your help. I understand, Tommy! It’s a big ask, expecting you to authorise the Elliot Foundation to give money, under the direction of people who know what they’re doing when they spend it.”

Tommy’s eyes narrowed, in that weird way that made the rest of his face completely blank - he just disappeared when he frowned like that.

“Hush, you,” he said. “Sarcasm has never suited you, Ophelia.”

“Yes it has,” she assured him. “And you’re a tightwad, Thomas. The city is dying, Elliot, and you’re letting it!”

“I am not- Where do you think my father-in-law to-be gets the money to sponsor his soup kitchens? His homeless shelters?”

“Gun running, Thomas,” Peyton said while scanning the menu. “And drug dealing, and extortion - don’t try to take the credit for Father’s business acumen, darling, he’s a very capable businessman, even if most of his business is illegal.”

Peyton’s father was the head of the Irish mob in Gotham, a beast of a man named Sam Riley - his grandfather and Ophelia’s great-grandmother had been brother and sister, twins with equally vicious tempers and senses of humour. Ophelia had never much claimed the Riley connection, but Dad had made use of it a few times, that she knew of, and Sam had personally supplied for all of Mikey’s less savoury needs and desires.

Peyton was fine, though. A good egg in a rotten basket. She and Tommy had gotten together in college, and even when Aunt Dahlia had disapproved of Peyton so much she’d almost broken them up, they’d stayed solid, and were due to marry in August.

“Tom,” Ophelia said gently, “I didn’t just shit on you. I pissed all over Bruce and half a dozen others, too.”

“Language, Ophelia,” Peyton said lightly, turning to the wine menu with a smile. “There’s a very handsome young reporter sitting two tables over, and he’s hiding a dictaphone in the umbrella hanging over the back of his chair - I saw him hide it there. So smiles on, darlings, and pretend not to be fighting. Rare, for the two of you, but try.”

Tommy scowled, but it was false - his eyes were still warm, the same green as Ophelia’s own, which meant he was on the verge of smiling.

“See?” he said, shaking his head. “I’ve given up complete control over my every action - blame my mafiosa girl for my being tighter than a duck’s ass.”

Lunch remained strained, their smiles a little tight, but Ophelia and Peyton did manage to extort a promise for a half-million dollar investment in the Dahlia Elliot Clinic from Tommy.

 

* * *

 

Dinner with Bruce, on the other hand…

“You know nothing about the activities of the Martha Wayne Foundation!” he snapped, looming over her in one of those intensely black suits he’d favoured since coming home - they made him seem bigger, somehow, which was ridiculous, considering how muscley he’d gotten. “How dare you, Ophelia? How dare you insinuate that I don’t do enough to help this city!”

“You know it’s true, Bruce,” she said sharply, folding her arms and leaning back. Alfred had set them up for dinner in the mistress’ dining room, a beautifully decorated west-facing room in the suite that had belonged to Bruce’s mother, and all the Mrs. Waynes before her. “The monorail being rebuilt is great and all, but I’ve seen the figures - the people it’s supposed to help can’t afford to use it, and it’s becoming dangerously dilapidated even just two years after it was built up again. You’re throwing money at big projects that provide bursts of short term employment and then forgetting about them!”

“And you’re an expert, I suppose,” Bruce said furiously. “What do you know about this, Ophelia? You’ve never lived outside the Palisades-”

“Just, you know, the other side of the Atlantic Ocean?” she pointed out. “Shut up, Bruce, accept that I’m right in this - I usually am.”

“Oh my God, Phee!”

 

* * *

 

There was sex, afterwards, angry sex during which she bit him hard enough to bruise and he held her hips tight enough to leave fingermarks while fucking up into her, like a really good orgasm might convince her to change her mind.

He left her alone in his bed, afterwards, and she got up at one in the morning and had a shower before going home, leaving a note to remind Bruce to pick Scout up after school the following afternoon because she had a meeting with the Foundation board.

Scout was asleep in her bed when she got to her room, and there was a note from Evan on her nightstand reminding her that she had an appointment with Doc Leslie at ten in the morning.

“Ew,” she managed, and then she curled around Scout and went to sleep.

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

There was a new serial killer in the city.

Bruce had been picking up hints as to his existence for weeks now - first, he’d thought the Red Hood had finally cracked, but that had been a false lead. There had been nothing but false leads for the last few months, nothing but trails leading into the Narrows and back out. Bruce was losing his patience, and his temper, and it was getting him nowhere.

“No new trace evidence,” he growled down the comm to Alfred. “Some more merino wool caught on a hinge, more hypoallergenic bandage fibres-”

_“Nothing of any use, then,”_ Alfred said. _“Open it up to the police, sir, and come home.”_

All they’d found at the murder scenes was those few fibres, aside from the bodies. They’d all been neat, twin bullet holes in each victim, one between the eyes and the other under the chin, mob-style but the wrong calibre of bullet. The killer was using a customised gun, with a muffler that scored each bullet with a very particular pattern, and each victim was left lying just to the left of the primary blood pool, as if the killer had waited around and tidied up after himself.

_“I’ll send these new photos to the MCU, shall I?_ ” Alfred asked, something suspiciously like sarcasm in his voice. _“While you’re distracted, sir.”_

Alfred was of the opinion that Bruce had been distracted since the day Ophelia had finally started speaking to him again, which wasn’t a million miles from the truth. It was hard to think about serial killers and police procedure when he was finally allowed to be a father to Scout, now that he finally had Phee back in his life.

Maybe he’d been a little arrogant in assuming that everything would just fall back into place when he returned to Gotham. It had taken months with Rachel, years with everyone else, and longer with Phee than with everyone else. Only Alfred had been able to welcome him back right away, but Alfred was the nearest thing to a parent that he had left, the nearest thing to family until he’d found out about Scout and reconnected with Kate and the Captain, and Alfred had always seen the best in him.

_“Commissioner Gordon is on his way to you with Captain Montoya,”_ Alfred warned him. Bruce kind of enjoyed working with Jim Gordon, especially since they’d made their peace about Harvey Dent, but Renée Montoya was both dating Kate, who treated Bruce like a little brother, and hated and mistrusted the Batman, which made getting things done while she was in the room difficult, sometimes.

She’d started out in IA, under Harvey Dent, and Jim still hadn’t told anyone the truth of his death. Bruce didn’t blame her for her mistrust, in the circumstances.

“I’ll be home soon,” he said. “Send a message to Gordon, tell him we’ve got all we can. He’ll let his CSIs loose on the scene, maybe they’ll find something.”

 

* * *

 

The cave had been renovated to within an inch of its life since they’d moved back into the Manor - Bruce had installed a network of suspended stainless steel walkways and platforms to host everything short of the tumbler, keeping it all off the wet stone floor and allowing their computers to last more than a fortnight at a time.

“Try not to drip on the floor,” Alfred said mildly, holding out a towel as Bruce began to take off his armour. “I just washed it yesterday, you know.”

“I know,” Bruce assured him. “I slipped on my way to the elevator and landed on my ass.”

“Oh, yes,” Alfred said, more amused than he had any right in being. “I remember now.”

Bruce didn’t deign to answer that, choosing instead  to set his armour and cowl on the stand. Alfred would laugh until he was done, and then he’d set his mind to more serious tasks, like running full diagnostics on what little evidence Bruce had been able to find at the scene - they’d done it already at the previous murder scenes, and had turned up nothing of use, but there was always a chance that this time, he’d slipped up.

They could live in hope. That was more Ophelia’s bag than Bruce’s, but he’d go with it just this once. He was too much a natural pessimist to trust in something like hope any more than that, preferring things like science, and cold, hard, justice.

That in mind, he put the wool from the scene onto a slide, and slid it under a microscope to give it a cursory examination.

“The wool is exactly the same as the previous sample,” he said, refocusing the microscope rather than admitting his frustration. “Tan or brown merino, unremarkable except that it was at the crime scene.”

“Well, sir,” Alfred said, “it’s a good thing that there’s a difference in the bandages, isn’t it?”

 

* * *

 

The Red Hood Gang were the best heist team in the city. They got in quietly, they got out quickly, and ninety nine times out of a hundred, there were no casualties.

As far as criminals went, Bruce thought that the Hood and his boys were probably decent enough kids. The Hood ran a tight ship, kept his boys under control, and if anyone tried to break out on their own, he shot them in the knee.

The Hood’s main offices were above a garage in the middle of the Narrows, not far from two of the clinics Bruce knew Leslie Thompkins more or less ran - the Martha Wayne Foundation sponsored one, the Elliot Foundation the other - or from the Waterfront, probably the roughest area of the Narrows, which was saying something.

The Hood owned the garage, and the gym next door, and employed a dozen locals and kept half the kids of the Narrows out of trouble with his after-school clubs. Ophelia had mentioned something about Leslie suggesting that Scout join one of those clubs, and while Bruce was a little surprised by the idea, he could see the reasoning behind it. Leslie rarely suggested something that didn’t make sense, even if you sometimes had to come at her suggestions sidewise to see the logic.

“I need Roy Harper,” Bruce growled, perched on the window of the Hood’s office. Few people in the Narrows dared to leave their windows open, but no one would trouble the Hood - him and his boys did too much good, and they were too strong for much anyone who cared about this end of town to threaten. “He’s one of yours.”

The Hood - alias Jason Todd - blinked at Bruce, looking more surprised than unnerved, which was unusual.

“Roy’s been one of mine since we were kids,” Todd said. “What do you need him for?”

“He’s good with firearms,” Bruce said. “We’re having trouble. He might be involved.”

“Roy could’ve gone pro,” Todd agreed slowly, sizing Bruce up. “He was invited to join the Olympic team, archery, but he got in a car crash just before he was due to start training with them - lost his arm. He’s got a prosthetic now, aiming for the Paralympics, but he ain’t the man he used to be with a projectile, and he’s never liked guns much. Why d’you want him?”

Bruce tossed down a file of photos on the desk - a small file, which could fit into a pocket Lucius had somehow grafted to the inside of his cape - and waited as Todd took a look through them, wary frown turning concerned.

“I know Roy,” he said. “Roy had nothing to do with this.”

“Harper has a record of gun violence,” Bruce pointed out. “He served a five year sentence for murder-”

“That was self-defence,” Todd hissed, stepping right into Bruce’s space without a moment’s hesitation. “That shitstain was coming for Roy’s little sister, and if you’ve seen his sealed juvenille record, you’d know that, asshole.”

It took Todd a moment to collect himself then - Bruce did know that, did know that Roy Harper had turned his gun on a drug-pusher and child molester who’d previously abused his adopted sister, Mia Dearden, and had come after her a second time. According to the court records, the girl had just been diagnosed HIV-positive, and it had been a tense enough time without her abuser reentering their lives.

Bruce couldn’t say he wouldn’t have done the same thing in Harper’s place, but that wasn’t the point. The point was, Harper had snapped once before, snapped and reached for his gun, and there was nothing to say that he wouldn’t do it again. The point was, Bruce was running out of patience, and this was the best, maybe the only lead he had.

“I do know that,” he said. “But I still need Harper.”

Todd looked at him as if he’d lost his mind, but then he nodded.

“Roy’s downstairs,” he said. “Wait here. I’ll get him.”

Bruce did wait, shifting his stance to prepare for the inevitable attack.

Instead of an attack, Todd returned with a tall, skinny red-haired man of about twenty-five, with an empty sleeve.

“Whatever this is,” Harper said before Bruce could say a word, “I didn’t do it. I was here all night, giving classes until eleven, and then I was cleaning up downstairs with Mia and some of the older kids. I swear to God, Bat, I didn’t have anything to do with this. I don’t even run with the Gang anymore - I’ve gone straight, swear to God.”

“We found red hairs at the crime scene,” Bruce said. “Bullets that match the calibre of your preferred weapon, surgical bandages that might be used to wrap that,” he added, pointing to the empty sleeve, “and fibres from a wool coat. If not you, then who?”

To Bruce’s further surprise, Todd and Harper exchanged a look of what could only be described as horror.

“His name is Hush,” Todd said, “and he’s got too many friends for any of us to stop him - even you, big bad Bat.”

 

* * *

 

Ophelia flicked through her phone as the acupuncturist slipped more needles into her skin - this was her latest attempt at pain management without self-medicating, and it seemed to actually be working, which was a miracle - and nearly jumped out of her skin when her own face appeared on the screen.

“I’m going to kill that bitch,” she fumed, hoping that her therapist didn’t speak English as she dialled Evan and waited for the call to go through. Hopefully, Evan wouldn’t be working through his lunch, like he usually did, and would be able to do what needed doing.

“Little sister.”

“I need you to sue that venemous bitch’s ass,” she hissed. “Have you seen this shit? Evan, she’s saying I’m only working the Foundation because I’m your sister-”

“She’s not wrong, Ophelia,” Evan said evenly. “You’re a Monroe. That’s why you’re running the Monroe Foundation. You might like for it to be pointed out, but it’s no different than the Business Post pointing out that I’m only CEO because my great-times-whatever-grandfather founded the company. Grow a thicker skin, kiddo.”

“I’ll be damned-”

“Maybe you will,” he said, “but you’d need to talk to the Monsignor about that, not me. I’ve got to get back to work, kiddo, try not to draw Vicki’s ire again this week, okay?”

Ophelia opened her mouth to say that she would stop pissing Vicki Vale off when Vicki Vale stopped being an unrepentant bitch, but Evan hung up before she had the chance.

So she called Silver. Silver was so much more understanding.

“I’ve already had the lawyers issue a redaction order,” Silver said by way of answer. “Judge Bloomingdale is signing it as we speak.”

“Thank you!” Ophelia exclaimed, pleased that someone understood just how hard it was when Vicki Vale talked shit about her in the press. “I called Evan-”

“Evan’s snowed under with work at the moment, sweetheart,” Silver said. “He’s just a bit distracted - he’ll realise that he was being a dick once this deal is signed, I promise.”

“I know, Silv,” Ophelia sighed. “Thanks for this.”

“What are big sisters for?”

Silver had been more sisterly than Evan had brotherly since Ophelia had started talking to Bruce again - sure, Evan had never liked Bruce, but it had never impacted on Bruce and Ophelia’s relationship like this before, and it was starting to get to her. He was the only family she had left, except Silver and Scout and Tommy and Peyton, and she hated being at odds with him.

Maybe, once this deal he was working on was signed, they could work it out. She hoped so. She could never remember a deal taking so much out of him before, and worried that it was going to really affect his health.

She put her phone aside for the rest of her session, and didn’t take it back up until she was sitting in the car again, Emerson humming as he drove her through the post-lunch traffic in Midtown.

“Hey, Emmie?” she called, thumbing through the photos she’d taken last weekend, when Bruce had come over for dinner with her and Scout. “Do you know what’s up with Evan lately?”

“Work stress, ma’am,” Emerson said over his shoulder. “And he and Mrs. Monroe have been turned down for adoption again.”

Evan hadn’t even told her he and Silver were applying again - for some stupid reason, Evan had taken it into his head to not use their name and money to get a kid for himself and Silver, and wanted to go through the whole process as if they were just anyone else in Gotham. Of course, Evan and Silver weren’t far off fifty now, and Evan’s health would always count against them, which meant refusal after refusal.

“Damn it,” she grumbled. “Why doesn’t he tell me these things?”

“I think, ma’am,” Emerson said, “that he doesn’t want to add to your own stresses.”

Sure, Phee was a little stressed - Scout was having some trouble settling in at school, although he had made friends with Jack and Jane Drake’s son, and a couple of other boys, she and Bruce had been bickering like they were sixteen all over again, Tommy and Peyton had been weird lately, and setting the Foundation to rights was proving a _lot_ harder than she’d imagined. Even with all that, though, Evan should have told her. She was his sister.

It hadn’t felt like it very often, lately, but she was.

 

* * *

 

“Okay, buddy,” Bruce said, settling into place on the stool beside Scout. “Show me what you can do.”

From what Scout had told him, he’d been taking piano lessons since he was four years old - earlier even than Ophelia had started, and she’d practically been a prodigy before her hand was damaged in the attack. Somehow, Bruce had never yet heard Scout play, which seemed absurd now that they were here, sitting at the piano, Scout flexing his long, pale fingers, so like Ophelia’s had been, and Bruce was excited to hear this.

Rightly so, it turned out.

“Hey, buddy,” he said softly, “this is really good.”

Scout beamed up at him, his fingers still flying across the keyboard as if it was nothing.

“I bet your mom loves to hear you play,” Bruce added. “She used to be almost as good as you, when we were kids.”

“It makes her sad,” Scout said, his smile faltering a little. “She gets tears in her eyes when I play really well.”

“I think she’s probably only a litte sad,” Bruce said, “but mostly she’s proud. She cries all the time, buddy, I wouldn’t worry about that too much.”

“She cried because she was happy the other day,” Scout confided. “Uncle Harvey got good news from the doctor, she told me. Uncle Harvey said he’s going to start smoking again.”

Harvey Bullock was one more member of Ophelia’s family who didn’t like Bruce, but at least with Bullock, it was mutual. The old man had worked with Ophelia’s mom when Grace had been an ADA - Bullock had been high up in Homicide, and had transferred to the MCU before it had been shut down the first time. He’d mentored Jim Gordon, too, and was probably a good man, but he and Bruce had clashed ever since Bruce was a kid, and nothing was ever going to change that.

“He probably shouldn’t do that,” Scout went on cheerfully, “because his lungs are still sick, but he says he doesn’t care, because he misses smoking.”

“You know you shouldn’t listen to him when he says cigars are the nicest thing in the world, right?”

“I know, Dad,” Scout sighed, rolling his eyes - Phee’s eyes - in exasperation. “I’m not stupid, Dad.”

“I know that, buddy,” Bruce promised him. “You’re the smartest person I know.”

It was probably true, but even if it wasn’t, Scout smiling like that was worth any kind of lie.

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

“I don’t like it,” Ophelia said flatly. “I really, _really_ don’t like it. I’d rather entrust the money directly to Lorna Shore, if I had to choose.”

The board of the Foundation wanted to donate to the City Museum, which wasn’t a bad idea - the Museum’s funding took care of _all_ the museums in the city, including those in the rougher parts of town, so it wasn’t as if she would just be pumping money into Uptown, where it wasn’t needed.

The board of the Foundation wanted to give the money to the Museum’s board of trustees, though, and that she didn’t like. She really _would_ rather give the money straight to Lorna Shore, manager general of the Museum’s operations, as honest a woman as there seemed to be in the city, with the possible exception of Doc Thompkins.

“Miss Shore is very capable,” one of the old men around the table assured her insincerely, “but we feel that she might be… Ill-suited to oversee the distribution of any money we might choose to donate to the Museum.”

Whether it was because Lorna Shore was a woman or because she hadn’t grown up in the Palisades, Ophelia didn’t know, but thanks to Evan having signed away the Director’s power of veto while she was living in London, Ophelia would have to bow to the board or not give money to a worthy cause at all. She knew that these men and women had probably already arranged for _tips_ from the Museum’s trustees, and that hardly any of her money would go toward repairing buildings or arranging new exhibits. It pissed her off, but it was the battle she constantly faced.

It pissed her off doubly when she remembered how, while complaining about having no veto over drinks with Bruce, Tommy, and Kate, she’d discovered that they still had their vetoes over their foundations, despite Evan _insisting_ that this was standard practice now.

“Alright, then,” she said. “What do you suggest we do to ensure the money reaches its intended targets?”

The argument lasted until almost nine o’clock, at which point she realised she was _really late_ to pick Scout up from Bruce’s, and _really_ wished that she hadn’t run into Kate in the foyer of the Monroe Foundation Building.

“Kate, I really can’t stop-”

“You’re coming to the opera with me,” Kate said firmly. “I’ve already cleared it with Bruce that Scout can stay at the Manor tonight, and Emerson has a new outfit in the car for you-”

“I don’t have my opera glasses,” Ophelia said, blindsided and also deeply grateful. Kate was a little older than her, tall and striking and _strong_ , physically and in every other way a woman could be strong, and Phee had always been a little shy of her. It was easy to let Kate bully her into taking a night off, something selfish that she sometimes felt she didn't deserve. “Kate-”

“You left them in my car last time we went with Bruce and the others,” Kate said triumphantly. “Now get your butt into the car - it’s _La bohème_ , Phee. You _know_ you can’t resist Puccini.”

It was true - it had always been her favourite opera, with the possible exception of _Turandot_ , and she knew there was no point in resisting anymore.

“We’d better be in your box,” she said. “You’ve got a better view than I do.”

“We always are,” Kate pointed out, dragging her toward the door by her good hand. “Just like was always sit in your box at the ballet. Now come on, or we’ll be late!”

 

* * *

 

Tommy and Peyton were already in Kate’s box when she and Ophelia arrived, which was good - Tommy made Kate a little uncomfortable, sometimes, but she liked Peyton, and Ophelia adored them both. Kate had gotten together with Bruce and Tommy and Silver, and they’d agreed that Ophelia _needed_ a night off, without Scout or work or Evan, and they knew that this was the only way to give her that without her getting amazingly drunk.

“Not late,” Kate said, pleased by that. It had been a near thing, with all the fuss Phee made of her gloves and her lipstick and her goddamn shoes, but they’d made it, and they even had Ophelia’s beloved opera glasses, which Kate had to admit were pretty great - rather than the standard-issue gold, they were enamelled, bright red roses against a deep green background. “Now sit back, relax, and enjoy the show, Monroe.”

“I’ll do my best,” Ophelia said gravely, a little mockingly, taking the seat in front of Tommy, which left Kate in front of Peyton, which was fine by her. “But don’t think I don’t realise that there’s some kind of conspiracy behind all this. I know I didn’t leave my opera glasses in your car, because I called Alfred after I left them in Bruce’s car after we saw Aida last month.”

“Whatever, Monroe,” Tommy laughed, tapping his knuckles against her shoulder just as the lights dipped. “You love us too much to hold a grudge.”

Which was probably true - Phee had a reputation for grudges, most notoriously against Alberto Falcone, but she also loved very intensely, if very selectively. She’d be a little pissed off for maybe a week, but then it’d be as if nothing had happened.

She and Tommy kept up a whispered conversation throughout the first act - a detailed critique of the performance, knowing them, with Tommy leaning over Ophelia’s shoulder and both of them peering hard through their opera glasses. From this angle, with that bright hair, they actually looked really alike, which they never had before, at least not to Kate.

“It’s the frown,” Peyton whispered right in Kate’s ear. “They both frown exactly the same - it must be an Elliot thing, I guess. Like the hair.”

Kate believed that, since she and Bruce apparently had the same smile despite otherwise looking nothing alike. It happened 

Peyton and Phee had something in common, too, from their shared great-great grandparents - something about the shape of their face, or their nose, Kate couldn’t put her finger on it, but it was right there, a reminder that she was pretty sure the Monroes didn’t really want that they didn’t come from pure blueblood stock, the way Kate herself did, or Bruce.

Someday, in the circles they moved in, that would probably come against Ophelia - more her than Evan, since it was through her that the Monroe name was going to be carried on, thanks to Scout - but for now, it was just a little odd, to be the only person outside the circle in their box.

 

* * *

 

Tom got up to use the restroom at the interval, which was typical - he’d probably come back right before the second act began with a tray of drinks balanced on one hand and his white scarf draped over the other hand, like a waiter's towel, which was one of his little quirks, but he always disappeared during the first interval and missed out on all the speculation.

That was one of her favourite parts - trying to guess how the rest of the performance would go, trying to anticipate just how well the sopranos would hold 'til final curtain, how expansively over-the-top the baritone would get. It had been the part of the opera and the ballet she shared with Dad, without Evan or Mikey getting involved, and it had been 

Phee loved the opera, almost as much as she loved the ballet, and was only sad that Bruce didn’t enjoy it as she did - she understood it, and knew that he liked it sometimes, if he was in the right mood, but mostly he avoided the Opera House at all costs.

Which meant Tommy bore the brunt of her interest - he loved expensive evenings of music almost as much as she did, and enjoyed the theatre of a night at the opera even more than she did, right down to the dressing up. His habit of disappearing during the first interval was the only flaw she’d found in him, as far as being her opera date went.

“One night,” Peyton said wistfully, fanning herself with something delicate in black lace, which looked like it belonged in the hand of a flamenco dancer, “Tom’ll listen to me when I ask him to bring me to whatever Broadway show is in town. He knows I can never keep track of the stories in these things.”

“I’ll bring you next time _Wicked_ visits,” Phee promised, because hell, it was music, and a night out, and she could probably bring Scout to something like that. “Just let me know so I can arrange for a box, okay?”

Peyton and Kate laughed at that, and they were all laughing by the time Peyton’s bodyguard crashed through the doors of the box to throw himself over her, a gunshot echoing in from the hall outside.

Kate got there before Ophelia and Peyton only because she was so damn tall and athletic, and she just about managed to hold Ophelia back.

Peyton didn’t have someone to hold her back, and so she threw herself across Tommy’s chest and screamed, his blood seeping into her white satin gloves and her pale hair.

“There was a man,” someone nearby said. “He was wearing a long coat, and his head was- it was wrapped in bandages.”

 

* * *

 

Bruce found Ophelia sitting under Kate’s arm, wearing a GCPD jacket over her Chanel evening gown, her eyes red and shining.

“Who’d want to kill Tom, Bruce?” she demanded, apparently having moved straight into the anger stage of grief. “Why’d they- who’d do this?”

“Miss Monroe?”

Jim Gordon looked exhausted, and his tie was looser than Bruce had seen it since he’d been promoted to head of the MCU, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that someone had killed Tommy, and Jim Gordon would find out who.

“Can I speak with you a minute?” Gordon asked, gesturing for her to follow him into an office - Montoya’s, Bruce realised, as the other woman came to sit with Kate. “Mr. Wayne can accompany you, if you’d like.”

“I would,” Phee said, standing up and taking Bruce’s hand. He followed her in Gordon’s wake, shutting the door behind them and almost startling at the sudden quiet. He wouldn’t, not usually, but two gunshots killing someone he considered family at he Opera House… It had left him shaken. “What can I do for you, Commissioner?”

“We had to send Miss Riley to the hospital,” he said, looking uncomfortable. “She’s been sedated - she became hysterical when we tried to part her from Doctor Elliot’s remains. With her in that state and your brother unreachable, I’m afraid you’re Doctor Elliot’s next of kin, Miss Monroe, and we need to have someone identify him.”

Bruce was amazed by that - it had only been six hours since Tom had been shot, and to think that the autopsy had already been complete was insane. He’d never known an autopsy to be done so quickly, but, well, this was a high profile case. Tom was- had been one of the most well known people in the city, and one of the most popular, and he was just the latest in a string of serial murders.

He’d found those same damn bandages and wool fibres caught on a dumpster and a brick wall in the alley at the back of the Opera House, and had nearly gotten sick just for being there with the smell of gunfire sharp in the back of his throat. Alfred was analysing the fibres right now, trying to find something that might reveal the identity of Tommy’s killer, but Bruce wasn’t holding out any hope.

Ophelia had sunk down into a chair, her hands over her face, and Bruce could only remember her actually looking as small as she was a handful of times before - it hurt to see her like this, her shoulders shaking and her fingers curling into the thick roll of hair at her hairline, so he took matters into his own hands, kind of.

“I can identify Tommy,” he said. “I’ve known him as long as Ophelia has - let me do it. Please, Commissioner.”

 

* * *

 

Scout didn’t take the news well. Better than Peyton, sure, but not well.

Scout, at least, was well enough to attend the funeral. Peyton was still under heavy sedation, because whenever she was allowed to wake up, she just about screamed the hospital down.

Ophelia kept her arm around Scout, her hand resting over his heart, and tried not to scream the cemetery down as Bruce read Walt Whitman over the grave and the rain made everything else quiet.

 

* * *

 

Bruce didn’t know what to say at the wake - he’d never been good at this kind of thing.

He stayed with Scout, mostly, who was completely silent - from what he’d gathered, during the time he’d known Scout, big upsets tended to leave him mute, and there weren’t many upsets bigger than losing what more or less amounted to an uncle. Tom had always been good with Scout, even Phee admitted that, and she was so jealous of Scout’s love that she rarely admitted to anyone being good with him.

“Hey, little man,” Ophelia said, brushing Scout’s hair back from his face with steady hands somewhere around seven o’clock. “You want to get out of here?”

Scout nodded sharply, jolting forward and wrapping his arms tight around Phee.

“You and me are going home,” she told him, winding one arm around his shoulders and holding the other hand out to Bruce. “Emerson is going to drive us, and then we’re going to have cocoa and cookies, and we might watch Aladdin, yeah?”

Scout nodded some more, and Bruce realised that the poor kid was crying. He felt completely helpless, because he had no idea what might comfort his own son.

“Hey, Scout?” Phee said softly, her fingers warm around Bruce’s. “You want your dad to come too? We can have a slumber party, just us three. How does that sound?”

One of Scout’s hands shot backwards, and Bruce let himself be led out to the waiting car - one of the many Rolls Royces from Phee’s dad’s collection, this one a deep navy blue that was surprisingly subdued, given the last Liam Monroe’s tastes.

 

* * *

 

It turned out that all he had to do to comfort Scout was hold onto him, which was good to know.

 

* * *

 

“Hush,” Bruce said, two days and no new leads later. “That’s what this guy is calling himself. Why Tommy?”

“I’ve done some digging on this Hush character, sir,” Alfred said, “and I’ve turned up some interesting connections.”

Bruce scanned over the files Alfred was opening on the monitor, his stomach dropping just a little further with every one.

“A contract killer,” he said, horrified. “But who’s contracting him?”

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

“Tell me, Jaybird,” Steph said, swinging in Jay’s open window. “What’re we doing about this Hush guy?”

Steph was a little wild - she was only nineteen, crazy smart and quick as a fox, and she somehow kept Midtown as quiet as it could be. Maybe it was her old man’s legend, maybe it was being allied with Kori Andrews and all her money, maybe it was just Steph’s wicked charisma, Jay didn’t know, but it _worked._

He liked Steph heaps - she was a good kid, and she knew how to respect territorial boundaries. Jay liked that in an ally.

“I’m doing all I can already,” he said, motioning for her to sit down. “I’ve got squads out after him, and after whoever is bankrolling him, but I got shit so far - you have any luck?”

“Not a bit,” she admitted. “And I talked to Kate, over in Uptown - she’s got nothing either. I don’t even think Penguin has anything, and you know how good he is at finding out how people are spending their money.”

Jay had had Babs look into it, and aside from whispers of the guy as a hitman, she’d found nothing about this Hush. His trademark was a two-shot kill, and he always left a few fibres from his fancy coat and a few from his bandages behind. He’d left those hairs the Bat found by accident, Jay was sure of it, and Roy hadn’t had any luck in digging anything up about a red-haired sharpshooter from any of his contacts around the city’s gun clubs and shooting ranges.

The dude was a ghost, and that worried Jay more than he’d like to admit.

“He’s got big money behind him,” Jay said. “He must have, else we’d have found something on him by now.”

“Let’s follow the money, then,” Steph said. “Kate might be able to find something out - she’s one of them, after all. I’ll have Penguin do some poking, and you set your new tech wizard on the job, too.”

“Tech wizard?”

“Dude,” Steph said disbelievingly. “Your intel has been off the _charts_ lately. Did you think none of us would notice?”

Jay should have known better than to ask Babs for help. She was just too damn good.

 

* * *

 

“Sir?”

“Yeah, Alfred?”

Bruce was exhausted - he’d been out on patrol for most of the past three nights, grabbing a couple of hours sleep around five in the morning before picking Scout up for school and then spending the day between his office at the Foundation and Lucius’ office in the Wayne Tower - and Alfred wouldn’t have disrupted his stupor if it wasn’t important.

“There’s a pattern,” he said, spreading a huge number of spending histories from a variety of bank accounts across three monitors. “Four million dollars to an anonymous account in the Cayman Islands, one two days before each murder.”

It was true, Bruce could see it now that Alfred had pointed it out - the names on the accounts were familiar, Bloomingdale and Harlaw and Marcosi, de Souza and Jameson and Ivanovich.

_St. Cloud,_ Bruce saw, two days before Roman Sionis’ death - Ophelia’s sister-in-law was a St. Cloud, and while this wasn’t Silver’s own bank account, she _had_ to know about this, given how _interested_ Sionis had been in her before his death. Did that mean Evan knew? Did that mean Ophelia knew?

“All of these families have standing invitations to many high profile events that benefit the city,” Alfred said, “much as you do yourself. It seems, from what I can find, that they are traditionally seated together, and have been for generations.”

“What does that have to do with anything, Alfred?”

“Well,” Alfred said tartly, “I think I’d start looking into their associations with one another, given that only people who sit at these particular tables have been paying extortionate fees to an anonymous account two days before various high profile members of society are murdered, wouldn’t you?”

Bruce hesitated.

“Maybe I should sleep some first,” he said, agreeing to what Alfred hadn’t said. “Wake me in time to get Scout for school?”

 

* * *

 

While Scout was at school, Bruce locked himself in his rarely-used office at Wayne Enterprises, logged into the secure server Lucius’ daughter had built for him, and looked into the names Alfred had given him.

As a joke, they arranged for their tables at all those benefits and galas as the Court of Owls, saying they were richer than any courtiers had ever been, and they were night owls to a one.

Looking back through the records, Bruce saw a lot of familiar names.

His parents and Ophelia’s among them.

Looking closer at the records, he found another pattern Alfred had missed - every few years, a name or two would disappear from the tables. Sionis’ parents had been part of this “court,” as had Edward Nygma’s, and Julie Madison’s. The Ravencrofts, the Goldens, the Trusevichs, the Fairchilds…

There had been so many deaths in the past few months that he hadn’t seen the forest for the trees.

Comparing the accounts Alfred had dug up with the records of the table bookings, there weren’t many murders left in Hush’s little black book.

By Bruce’s reckoning, he was next.

 

* * *

 

Bruce was prowling the grounds in full armour when his earpiece buzzed.

_“Two payments were made the day before yesterday, sir,”_ he said urgently. _“One was from Alberto Falcone’s personal account.”_

“Alberto would never pay to kill me,” Bruce said, his stomach dropping. “But _Phee-”_


	8. Chapter 8

Whatever it was that woke Ophelia, it was small.

She was so attuned to the house that the creaking and groaning that came from a place of its age and size didn’t bother her, but a broken glass three floors down in the kitchen, or someone stepping on the creaky floorboard at the top of the main staircase?

That always woke her.

This time, she was pretty sure it was a single pane of broken glass in the library, because it came from somewhere to the west of her suite but not as far west as Evan and Silver’s.

Which meant it was closer to Scout that she was.

Barefoot and grateful she’d chosen to wear something more substantial than just panties and a tee of Bruce’s to bed tonight, Phee slipped out of bed, grabbed her gun and phone, and crossed to the door without stepping on the loose floorboard under the rug.

She dialled Bruce without thinking, turning down the screen brightness and holding her phone to her ear as she tip-toed down the hall. Her pyjama bottoms were Evan’s, and far too long, and they muffled the sound of her toes on the polished floor. She was grateful for that, because it meant that the only sounds she had to worry about were the ringing of Bruce’s phone down the line, and her own breathing.

“Bruce, it’s me,” she whispered, before he could speak. “There’s someone in the house, I need you to get here as quickly as possible-”

_“I’m already on my way,”_ he said, his voice low and hard. She could hear an engine roaring in the background, one of his sportscars, maybe, and flexed her grip on her gun. _“Get Scout and hide, Phee.”_

“Way ahead of you, sweetheart,” she whispered. “I love you. Be quick.”

_“I love you too,”_ he said back, urgently, like he needed her to understand something completely new, as if she hadn’t always known better than he had that he loved her. _“Get Scout, Phee. Get our boy.”_

She hung up on him then, tucked her phone into a vaseful of orchids, and kept her gun up.

Get Scout. She could do that.

 

* * *

 

The easternmost door of the library, the one nearest Scout’s room with the squeaky upper hinge, opened just as Phee let herself into his bedroom.

Scout was asleep, curled up on his side just like she always did, and opened his mouth as soon as she shook him awake. She had to press her whole hand over his mouth to keep him quiet, and even then it was a struggle to keep him quiet while she tucked his feet into his slippers and wrapped him up in his robe.

“It’s going to be okay, little man,” she whispered, kissing his hair and tugging him along behind her. “Your dad’ll be here soon and- and it’s going to be just fine, okay?”

Scout nodded, as if seeing her gun in her hand made him realise just how serious and scary this was, and pressed in close to her back. He was warm, and smelled sleepy, and she was going to shoot anyone who tried to hurt him until she ran out of bullets.

“I need you to be real quiet when we go into the hall, buddy,” she whispered, “and only put your feet where my feet go, okay?”

He nodded, his eyes huge and dark in his pale little face, and squeezed her hand.

“Okay,” she said, and then she nudged the door open with her foot.

The bullet didn’t hurt at first.

 

* * *

 

Bruce heard the bang, and hoped to God or anyone else who might be listening that it was the first.

“Get Leslie,” he growled to Alfred. “Tell her I’ve broken my neck if you have to, get her to the house.”

_“Downstairs, sir?”_

“Below stairs,” Bruce corrected. “Alfred-”

_“I know, sir.”_

Another three bangs echoed down from the direction of the library, and Bruce’s stomach fell right to his feet as he vaulted up the stairs three at a time, picturing Phee spread left and Scout spread right, blood pooling around scattered pearls and eyes reflecting artificial light-

But no, this wasn’t his parents, this was Phee, and this was their son, and Bruce was strong enough to protect them this time. He had to be, had to be better than he’d ever been before, because if losing Rachel had broken his heart for a while then losing Phee or Scout would destroy him completely, and he knew that.

There was blood on the landing outside the library when he got there, a trail leading through the door to an open window beyond, but Bruce knew better than to think Phee would try dragging Scout out a window if either of them were hurt. He followed the trail backwards, to its source, and couldn’t quite bring himself to push open the door of Scout’s room when he arrived.

He made himself, after a long, horrible moment, and didn’t even think before dropping to his knees beside Phee. There was blood everywhere, staining her faded grey shirt dark red, but she was awake, and had had Scout pressing hard into her stomach with the Knights jersey Evan had bought him for his last birthday.

“Wow,” Phee said, looking dizzy and out-of-focus. “I have to admit, you’re an upgrade, big bad bat.”

“I’ve got her, buddy,” he assured Scout, taking a compression bandage from a pouch on his belt. “I’m going to wrap this around her, and you’ll need to move your hands, okay? On three, Scout, one, two-”

Phee screamed when he wrapped her up, and Scout looked smaller than Bruce had ever seen him, so small it was just as scary as the blood that had spattered up on Phee’s neck and chin and cheek.

“Look at me, buddy,” Bruce said, pulling off his gloves and fiddling at the release for his cowl. “Keep looking at me, okay? This is important.”

Scout gasped when Bruce lifted off his cowl, clapping his hands over his mouth, but he kept quiet and his eyes stayed sharp. A sharp shock could upset him sometimes, but not now - maybe it was fear for Ophelia, maybe the OT was doing its job, Bruce didn’t know. Right now, it didn’t matter.

“You need to keep with me,” Bruce told him, gathering Phee up and nudging his gloves and cowl across to Scout. “Carry these for me, and keep close, okay?”

“You do what your dad says, little man,” Phee slurred, her head lolling against Bruce’s chest. “I’ll just- I’m-”

“Shut up,” Bruce told her, holding her higher. “You ready, Scout?”

Scout just nodded, holding onto the cowl like it was holy, and planted his feet in his neat blue slippers.

Evan and Silver would have to fend for themselves - Bruce hated it, but he had to get Phee to a doctor as soon as possible. That was all that mattered right now.

 


	9. Chapter 9

Alfred shielded Leslie from the spray that bounced off the tumbler as it roared through the waterfall, but she barely looked away at all. Master Bruce rising from the tumbler without his cowl and with Miss Ophelia in his arms was distracting enough, but young Master Liam beside him, pale and wide-eyed, was the icing on the cake.

“She’s been shot,” Bruce said, not even greeting Leslie as he laid Ophelia on the table. “I’ve got her taped up but she’s bleeding through - can you help her?”

“Of course I can,” Leslie said, moving smoothly into position and pushing Bruce away with a practised sort of ease. “Go help your son, boy, Alfred and I will save your wife.”

“She’s not-”

“She should be,” Leslie said firmly. “Now go away. Get Scout upstairs. Get him warm, and get something sugary into him. Can’t you see the poor thing is in shock?”

Leslie’s hands were flying, cutting through the bandage Bruce had wrapped around Ophelia’s torso, swabbing the wound to clear the blood so she could see what she was doing-

“Alfred,” Bruce said, “Alfred, please.”

Alfred hadn’t seen Bruce so upset since Rachel’s death, and didn’t quite know what to say.

“Take Master Liam upstairs,” he said. “You know how to work the stove.”

* * *

 

Scout began to cry as soon as Bruce let go of him in the kitchen.

“I’m right here, buddy,” he promised, stripping off his body armour as fast as he could manage, gathering Scout back against his chest as soon as he was down to just his undershirt. The armoured pants were a nuisance, but Scout didn’t seem to notice - he just pressed in close and held on tight, sobbing so hard Bruce didn’t know what to do.

“Your mom is going to be fine,” he said desperately. “Leslie is the best doctor in Gotham, Scout, I swear to God-”

Six weeks ago, Bruce would have said Tommy was the best doctor in the city, but that hurt too much to think about, and he didn’t have the pain to spare right now.

“I never meant to let anything hurt either of you,” he said against Scout’s hair - it was just the same as his own, springy and dark and neatly combed, and that hurt too, for some reason. “I’ll never let it happen again, buddy, I promise, I promise-”

He managed to stop crying just before Scout did, and he wondered if they looked as much alike with their eyes red instead of blue or green.

Scout nodded hard, and then scrubbed the back of his hand over his face. Bruce remembered what that felt like - the shock of the gunshot wearing off, the shock of the blood on his hands wearing off, and the shock of seeing his mother looking pale and fragile setting in.

“Let’s get you something to drink,” Bruce said, heaving him up onto the table and pulling himself away - reluctantly, he had to admit, because right now he was afraid that someone would climb in a window here and lift a gun to Scout all over again. “Hot milk? Cinnamon, like your mom takes it?”

Scout nodded again, which was good - he might have gone mute, but at least he was still responsive. His hands were shaking a little, blood gathered under his fingernails and in the creases of his palms, but the most important thing was to get something hot and sweet into him.

“Hot milk,” Bruce said again. “Lots of cinnamon.”

* * *

 

The latex of Leslie’s gloves snapped as she tugged them off and tossed them in the trash, flexing her fingers as she did so.

“Send for that boy,” she said, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Once I’ve slapped some goddamn sense into him, he can carry Ophelia upstairs and put her to bed.”

Miss Ophelia looked terribly small, laying on the table under the bright, white lights, in just a soft bra and pyjama bottoms that were far too big for her and soaked from waistband almost to the knee in blood. Alfred was inclined to clean her up, but he knew that Master Bruce would want to do it himself, just as he knew that if he were to offer to run a bath for Master Liam, he would be shouted down and told that Bruce could handle it.

“I’ll fetch him,” he said. “You clean up.”

“Alfred,” she called after him, as he stepped into the lift. “She was damn lucky I was on my way here before you called - if Bruce really is the Batman, then he needs to shut this down.”

“I know that.”

“I can put him in touch with some people,” she said. “Good kids, running good, clean crews. They can help.”

Alfred sighed. Of course Leslie was involved with unsavoury elements, he thought, remembering Master Bruce’s father sewing Carmine Falcone’s chest back together, or the rumours of the last Liam Monroe and his too-close involvement with the Riley family. There was something about high society in Gotham that found itself drawn to the criminal element, whether on good terms or bad.

“I’ll be sure to let him know that,” he assured her, because he would, and Leslie could deal with the fallout of her offer on her own.

* * *

 

“Why did they go for Ophelia?” Leslie asked, wondering if Bruce had ever recovered from Thomas and Martha’s deaths. She’d thought… Well, she’d been recovering too, and hadn’t been as much help as she should have been, but he’d seemed normal. A little moody, but he’d always had friends, and he and Ophelia had been together for as long as they’d been aware of one another as sexual beings, so she’d thought that he was fine.

Looking at him now, in armoured pants and boots just made for stomping, with blood and dirt and sweat smeared up his arms and over his jaw, she couldn’t say she thought the same anymore. He looked like a combat medic, like pictures she’d seen of Thomas from his time in the army, but Scout sleeping in his lap made him look incredibly young and fragile.

He was so like Thomas, with Martha’s hands and smile, but right now, all Leslie could see was that little boy she and Alfred had collected from the police department after he’d watched his parents die, wrapped in then-Sergeant James Gordon’s coat, which had been too big on Gordon, never mind on Bruce.

“I don’t know,” he said, his voice too small for such a big man. “I- I thought they were going to come after me. It’s some sort of society, hidden in the Palisades. Everyone seems to be a part of it. My father was, and Phee’s, and Tommy was involved, before he- before he was killed. The Court of Owls.”

Leslie had never heard of it, but something about it twitched in her memory. Something small and silver, bright in the dark, but she couldn’t remember what.

“They want to… Tidy up the city, from what I can gather. But they’re going about it wrong.”

Slightly hypocritical, coming from a man who ran around beating up bad guys at night while wearing a mask, but she wasn’t going to interrupt him now, especially not since the sound of his voice seemed to sooth Scout.

“I’ve been tracking them for a while,” he said. “Since Roman Sionis was killed. I swear, Leslie, if I’d thought Phee or Scout might have been in danger, I would never-”

“That doesn’t matter right now,” she said firmly. “Is this… Court of Owls anything to do with Hush?”

“What do you know about Hush?”

“As much as the Red Hood Gang knows,” she told him. “The Hood is a friend of mine - so is the Spoiler, for what it’s worth, and Batwoman and the Penguin both owe him favours. I can arrange a meeting, if you want. They can help you.”

“I fight alone,” Bruce said sharply. “I can’t risk anyone else-”

“Everyone else in the city is already at risk, Bruce,” she said. “The incidence of drug addiction has skyrocketed - and don’t dare interrupt me, boy - and the violence occurring citywide is… Astonishing me. I work at least two public clinics a day, for a few hours, and I’ve got eyes in all of them. Trust me. Whatever Hush is doing for these people, it’s working. The city is eating itself alive.”

Bruce looked hesitant, one hand curled around the curve of Scout’s skull and the other curled into a fist, and then he nodded.

“How soon can you arrange the meeting?”

* * *

 

Steph had her new girlfriend with her when she arrived - Jay had met Cass once or twice already, thought she was nice, if a little quiet, and didn’t really appreciate Steph bringing her along to a meeting like this.

“I know, I know,” Steph sighed, pulling off her balaclava and flashing him a smile. “Captains only, whatever, but Cass could be a real asset here - let her stay, okay?”

Jay rolled his eyes and leaned back against the wall, the hood hanging from his belt.

“For you, Stephanie? Anything,” he mocked, nodding to Kate when she swung in the upper window, sliding down one of those handy-dandy retractable ropes of hers to the floor. “We’re just waiting on- Jesus, Kate, you can’t all bring a damn visitor! This ain’t a tourist attraction!”

Jay knew the woman sliding down Kate’s rope a little better than he’d like - she’d arrested him once for possession, and arrested half of his crew at one time or another. Montoya. A hard-ass, and an MCU cop at that. One of Babs’ dad’s most trusted people.

“Renée,” he said. “Nice of you to drop in.”

“Good to see you, Hood,” she said drily, settling on a crate by Kate’s side. They looked good together - Montoya was all hard and sharp, with big wide eyes and pulled-back hair, but Kate had a jaw five miles long and this big mess of bright red hair, the same colour as the hood. “I didn’t know you were dating the Commissioner’s girl - she looks good. Babs, right?”

Babs was in the office block next door, keeping close watch on the CCTV and the audio surveillance they’d set up before anyone else arrived.

“If you touch her,” Jay said brightly, “I’ll tear your fingers off, one by one. Okay?”

Oswald’s fancy car roared to a stop outside, and they all held off commenting until he’d gotten inside and claimed the chair Jay had left out for him. He had two of his heavy goons with him, big guys in sunglasses even at this hour, with guns hanging heavy on their waistbands.

“Charmed, I’m sure,” he said, waving his cane to the room at large. “Are we waiting on anyone else, my dear boy? Your invitation wasn’t very clear.”

“Just one or two more,” Jay said. “An associate of mine arranged the meet, and I’m not sure if our new friend will be flying solo, or if he’s bringing company.”

“Solo,” came the growl, and only Kate didn’t jump. Jay had always admired that about her, how calm she always seemed. She looked more curious than unnerved, looking the Bat up and down and staring hard at his face - or at least, what could be seen of it, under his cowl. “You’re the Doc’s crew?”

“I am,” Jay clarified. “Everyone else is here on my invitation.”

Oswald looked shit-scared, his beaky little nose wrinkling under his shiny little glasses, but Jay should’ve expected that, he knew - there were more drugs around on Oswald’s turf than was safe, even by drug-running standards, and the Bat had a habit of going hard on drug-runners.

Jay had seen it for himself. Some of his boys had decided to make a little extra cash on the side by selling some coke - there weren’t many crews around the city that didn’t sell at least a little - and they’d ended up with cracked skulls for their efforts. Alive, but hospitalised and out of the game, which seemed to be the Bat’s MO.

“Spoiler,” he said, pointing to Steph, “and her girl. I hear you know Penguin,” he went on, gesturing back to Oswald, “and this, well, this is Batwoman.”

Jay thought his eyes might’ve been fooling him, but the Bat almost seemed to smile.

“So I’ve heard,” he said, sounding like he’d spent a day gargling razorblades. “You all want Hush down?”

“He’s stirring shit up all over town,” Steph said. “I keep running into idiots shouting his name every time I go on patrol - it’s getting to the stage where there’s no point in going on patrol. None of us can keep up with him. He’s got too much money behind him, and every time we throw one of his boys at the cops, the DA’s office gets them out.”

“He’s got serious money behind him,” Jay agreed, folding his arms and fingering the bandages the Doc had wrapped around his bicep just a couple of days ago. Hush himself had clipped him with a bullet during a heist, over at the currency exchange on Central Mayfair. “We can’t compete with that - Katiecakes over here has Uptown at her beck and call, but even she can’t do shit for us against him. We’re fighting a losing battle.”

“Not anymore,” the Bat said, sending a chill down Jay’s spine.

Now that was how you menaced someone.

* * *

 

“You trust the Bat?” Oswald asked, leaning forward over the top of his cane. “You trust him to trust us?”

Jay didn’t trust Oswald - he didn’t trust any man who spent as much on satin bowties as Oswald did - but he knew him, and knew how to keep him honest on a deal.

Fear tended to work.

“Look, Oswald, you know I don’t like you,” Jay said, “but you don’t like me either, so we’re good, right?”

“Indeed we are,” Oswald said, and as so often happened, Jay forgot for a second that Oswald was only in his thirties, not his damn sixties. “But that doesn’t answer my question, dear boy.”

“We can trust the Bat,” Kate said, appearing in the door with a cup of coffee in her hand. “Go with me on this - I know his type.”

“The Bat ain’t got a type, Katie, but you are a damn good judge of character,” Steph said firmly. “I say we trust him, Penguin - you saw how pissed he was about Hush. I figure, we use him for this fight, then we shake him off.”

Jay started to laugh at that - the Bat wasn’t the kind of guy you shook off, from what he’d seen. He was more the kind of guy who hung on until you’d shaken yourself to death, all in the name of justice.

Jay had seen a few people working for justice before - the Doc worked hard for it, and it showed in the scars under her white coats, just like Babs’ old man had bullet holes and worse under that godawful trench coat he wore all the damn time. More people, too, Kate’s old man, the Waynes, old dead Lady Grace, they had all been working to make the city a better place, and the city had eaten all of them alive.

It would eat the Bat up, too, if he wasn’t careful. Jay could retire the hood someday, Kate could cut her hair and hang up her retractable ropes, Steph could drop out to her mom’s folks in LA, even Oswald could slip away to somewhere expensive and chilly, but the Bat wasn’t the retiring sort. He’d die here, just like every other fool who tried to make the city better from the top down, instead of from the bottom up, and Jay almost felt sorry for him.

“We work with him as long as he’ll have us,” Jay said. “He has the same kind of money as Hush behind him - we can use that. Use him. We take down Hush, there aren’t going to be any contenders for his throne. Ain’t nobody got that kind of money.”

Jay knew a few places he could lay hands on big money - the Monroe Foundation was usually pretty good, Kate was richer than just about anyone he’d ever met, or even stolen from, and Kori in Midtown was always willing to help those less fortunate than her. Even with all that, even with the money the Doc had gotten from the Wayne Foundation for her clinic. and the club, even with their protection fees and the money they made from all their other business ventures, they couldn’t hope to match Hush.

The Bat might, though. Looking at all the toys the Bat had to play with, it looked like he had an old Palisades family in his ass pocket, or maybe more than one - with that behind them, they could buy Hush out of the market, and in doing so, they could lock him down for just long enough to get a bullet through his bandaged head.

“We side with the Bat,” Jay said, pushing himself to his feet. “Meet back here tomorrow night, same time - he’ll be here. I’ll make sure of it.”

Babs could backtrace some of the messages the Bat had sent her dad and get word to him. It wouldn’t be hard for her - she’d done something similar for Jay before, when the commissioner before Loeb had been tangled up with a couple of white boys who had a habit of selling underage girls to old men - and it’d mean the message wouldn’t be intercepted. Babs was too good for that.

* * *

 

Bruce slipped back into Phee’s room without waking her after he’d met with the…

He didn’t even know what to call them, the could-have-been crimelords who wanted to take Hush down.

He hadn’t told them about this conspiracy he’d found, this Court of Owls, because they didn’t need to know that. Looking at Cobblepot, he’d try to become a member of the court, and as for Kate, well, Bruce knew Kate wouldn’t want to get involved in anything that could do real damage to the city.

But, if he could use Kate, use her family name, he might have to tell her. If he told her, he’d have to tell the others.

“I don’t know if I can do this, Phee,” he said, running his hands through his hair. “Work with scum like this? Bring down… It seems like the whole city is in on it. Everyone we know. Our _parents,_ Phee! My dad and yours, they were involved in this… _Court._ ”

Phee didn’t stir. She just lay there, small and pale, wearing an old Knights jersey of his and smelling of antiseptic.

“I still don’t know where Evan and Silver are,” he told her. “For all I know, Evan is involved in this - or maybe Silver is. The St. Clouds are as old a family as we are, right? And her brother paid for Roman Sionis’ death, Phee. That doesn’t look good, does it?”

She didn’t respond, which was good. He didn’t even know what he was saying, so it was just as well she was asleep.

“Maybe if I’d gone to these… These kids sooner, I might have been able to stop Hush sooner,” he said. “If Kate had come to me, or if I’d seen that there was something more-”

Alfred had reprimanded him for saying as much just days ago, but that had been before Hush had come for Phee - because it had to have been Hush, no one else would dare attack a house in the Palisades. No one else would be stupid enough.

“Too late for that,” he said, taking Phee’s hand in his. It was her bad hand, her ring finger and her pinky never quite straight and deep scars that had never faded fully cutting through her pale skin, but even with all that, it was warm and soft, and the inside of her wrist always smelled just slightly of the same perfume. “If I’d known he was going to come for you, Phee, for Scout-”

Phee stirred just a little then, a shifting sigh and her fingers flexing, and he kept quiet for a while, just looking at her.

“I’m going to finish this, Phee,” he promised her. “If he hadn’t come after you and Scout, maybe… I think I’m going to have to kill him, Phee. Like I did Harvey Dent. To save the city.”

He kissed her hand, checked in on Scout, and went for a shower. It was almost five, and he wanted to keep Scout as much in his routine as he could without letting him out of the Manor, which meant getting him up early for breakfast.


	10. Chapter 10

The Court met in an elegant boardroom, panelled in pale aspen below the silvered rail and papered in pale blue above.

“She’s alive?” the man at the head of the table asked. “You ensured it?”

“Unless we misjudged him and he left her for dead,” the bandaged man said, “yes, she’s alive. I made sure the shot was non-lethal, and I didn’t touch the kid.”

The stubble on his jaw itched - he was used to being clean-shaven, and it annoyed him that he hadn’t been able to shave yet. He’d just about been able to stitch up the wound on his arm, a bullet graze from his little adventure in Monroe House.

“She’s going to survive,” he said as an assurance. “I’m good at what I do. They’re scared, but they’re alive.”

The man at the head of the table and the woman at his side both sighed - the bandaged man knew better than to irritate either of them, even with his capabilities and reputation, and sighs usually meant anger. Now, for some reason, they looked sad, something he didn’t understand.

Once he had his target running scared, he wouldn’t be sad. Thrilled, excited, delirious, but not sad.

“You’re dismissed,” the man said. “Remember what needs to be done, Hush. This needs to be perfect.”

“Til Friday, then,” Hush said, bowing in a mockery of courtly manners, and departed. Ivy was waiting in the car for him, ready with all sorts of fun new toys for them to try out on Friday night, and they had to test them before then.

 

* * *

 

Kate was many things. Lesbian, Jew, former soldier, current masked vigilante, airhead socialite, genius engineer.

She was not cruel, which was why she didn’t want to get involved with these people. The Bat had asked, though, and Kate had been trading on his brand for long enough that she didn’t dare say no. She’d poked through the Captain’s desk, ignoring Cathy’s objections, and found the papers he’d hidden, in the secret compartment in the bottom left drawer. Kate had hidden things there herself, things belonging to Mom or Alice that she hadn’t wanted Cathy to get at, and Cathy had never found them - of course the Captain had hidden things for her to find. Things he hadn’t wanted anyone else to know about.

The Court of Owls. It sounded completely ridiculous, and judging by what the Captain had written about it, Kate wouldn’t exactly be welcome - but she’d be tolerated, for her name. The Kanes were one of the oldest families in Gotham, and Kate was the only real Kane left. Cathy didn’t count, despite her insistence that everyone respect her as Mrs. Kane.

Mom had been the last real Mrs. Kane, and everyone knew it - just like everyone knew Ophelia would eventually be the new Mrs. Wayne, once Bruce got his head out of his ass and made an honest woman of her.

Kate wouldn’t have a Mrs. Kane - Renée wouldn’t take her name, if Kate could convince her to get married - but she was the only means of continuing the line, and that apparently meant that this court would accept her. They were all about continuity, apparently.

They met not in the kind of shadowy, torch-lit hall Kate expected of a secret society - instead, they met in the ballroom at City Hall, hosting a fundraiser for the rebuilding of Gotham General, which still lay in a wreck from the Joker’s attack.

Everyone shit on the Bat - the Bat who had a very familiar smile, one Kate knew from the Captain’s face, and Aunt Martha’s, and from Bruce’s, but that was for later, when she went to visit her little cousin - but he’d shut down so much bad in the city. The Roman, the Scarecrow, Big Sal, the Joker, he’d taken them all out, and for no thanks - Kate admired that. She didn’t get much thanks for her efforts, and neither did Renée, so she knew how that might feel, even if not on such a grand scale as the Bat did.

Kate took her place at the table the Court had reserved, more amused than she would ever admit by the tiny owls embossed on the snowy white placecards - they were classy, classier than the familial crests that were the usual fare at this sort of thing, or the ornate city arms that appeared at official events.

This was an official event, but this table seemed to exist in a whole other dimension.

“Miss Kane,” Alberto Falcone greeted her. “Such a pleasure to see you joining our table - I hear there was some drama, at your end of the hills?”

Your end of the hills, as if her and Bruce and Ophelia lived in total isolation, as if by dying Tommy had left the now-empty Bayview as an uncrossable border between their homes, Hillcrest and Wayne Manor and Monroe House, and all the rest of the Palisades. Drama, as if Ophelia wasn’t only barely alive after being shot in the stomach and somehow-

Now wasn’t the time for speculation. Now was the time for smiling like a starlet on the casting couch, and letting her foxfur slide down her shoulders, just a little, to distract Alberto.

“Oh, there’s always something,” she said airily, feigning pleasure when he kissed her gloved hand. “Nice view of the podium from here - do we pay a little extra on our tickets for that?”

Alberto laughed and guided her down into her seat, the light flashing on his little lilac glasses. He wore them because of some kind of eye condition, or so he told people, but they made him look unbelievably obnoxious, especially with how he was always adjusting them.

“In a manner of speaking,” he told her. “You’ll see - all will be revealed tonight. You chose a good time to sign up, Katiecakes.”

Her smile froze into lockjaw at that - no one outside of her friends ever called her Katiecakes, and even then, there were very few who got away with it. Alberto was not her friend, but she had to keep him on side for long enough to figure this all out, which meant she couldn’t break his nose.

“I’m sure,” she said instead, setting her foxfur over the back of her chair and waving down a waiter. “Virgin Bloody Mary, please,” she said, smiling when the girl gave her tattoos a surprised once-over. “Lots of ice.”

“Not drinking tonight, then?”

“I figure I’d best keep sharp, if tonight is so important.”

 

* * *

 

Bruce wondered how any of these kids got anything done when all they seemed to do was bicker.

He’d shared out earpieces and comms, per Alfred’s suggestion, and was inundated with chatter, particularly from Stephanie and Jason. Cassandra never seemed to speak at all, and Renée seemed only to want to shut the kids up.

Bruce didn’t talk much, either. He watched.

Kate was handling herself perfectly, as he’d known she would - he’d been a little jealous of her ease in polite company, before he went away, because he’d always felt out of place, as if everyone was staring at him because they knew his story.

Tommy and Phee had understood better than anyone, but Tommy was gone and Phee was just about holding on.

“Penguin is on the ice,” Kate murmured, her voice tinny through the mic they’d hidden in a cultured ruby bracelet. She wouldn’t be able to say much more without being noticed, which was why Bruce had rigged the whole place with mics - or rather, he’d bought the contract for the wiring and lighting for Jason’s crew, and they’d rigged the place. Both Alfred and Barbara Gordon - Oracle, over the comms, because she knows everything according to Jason - were getting the audio and video feeds, chipping in with relevant information whenever they deemed necessary, and Bruce had to admit that Barbara was probably sharper than Alfred, even if she didn’t have his natural cynicism or his soldier’s sensibilities.

Cobblepot’s arrival meant they had a second set of actual eyes inside the building, and a second ally against the Court - not that Cobblepot himself would be much good if it came down to a physical fight, but Bruce was almost certain the Penguin hid a sword in his cane, and he had an army of hired muscle who could stand up to just about anything the Court threw at them.

Or at least, that’s what Bruce hoped. He still didn’t understand the Court, didn’t know enough about them to understand why they were doing the things they were doing - he just knew that they were behind the trouble the city had faced over the past six months, and that they had to be taken down.

He hoped his motley crew were up to it. He hoped he was up to it, and that he could find out why they’d gone after Phee, after Scout, before he passed them over to the cops.

Maybe he could find out where Evan and Silver were, while he was at it.


End file.
